Ss 


LAG 


APIS se Su 


SRI RSS SN 





UNIVERSITY OF 
ILLINOIS L!8RARY 
AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
BOOKSTACKS. 


NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for 
each Lost Book is $50.00. 

The person charging this material is responsible for 
its return to the library from which it was withdrawn 
on or before the Latest Date stamped below. 


Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- 
nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. 
» To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 ie 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


BP f | a tA AK 
BER V 0 199 
2 th 











JUN 11 1997 
JUN 14 1991 


pan 0 Pit 
© Zz a er a oO 
mH JAN 2 7 2900 











L161—O-1096 





UNIVERSITY OF 
ILLINOIS L'SRARY . 
AT URGANA-CHAMPAIGN 
BOOKSTACKS 








DRUMMOND’S 


ADDRESSES. 


The Greatest Thing in the World. 
Pax Vobiscum. 
The Changed Life. 
“First!” — A Talk with Boys. 
flow to Learn How. 
What is a Christian 2? 

The Study of the Bible. 

A Talk on Books 


vis NEW YORK: 
OPTIMUS PRINTING COMPANY, 
45, 47,49 & 51 ROSE ST, 


ut 





at} | 
Ds4L- 
BIZ ea 


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF PRO- 
FESSOR DRUMMOND. 


THE author of these remarkable addresses 
was born in Scotland in 1851, and studied for 
the University of Edinborough in private schools 
in his native city of Stirling. After gradua- 
tion here he continued his studies in Tubin- 
gen, Germany. He early gave signs of special 
promise, and it was decided that he should 
enter on the career of the ministry; and after 
his ordination he was appointed to a mis-. 
sion station at Malta. It was in the leisure 
of this rather solitary work that he was ena- 
bled to find time to turn his thoughts more 
entirely to the subject he has since treated 
in lecture and book, although it was not until 
long afterward that these efforts were made 
public. 


. ii 


iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


On his return to Scotland he was appointed 
a lecturer in science at the Glasgow Free Church 
College; and it was at this period that his first 
book, “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” 
made its tremendous sensation, running through 
endless editions at home and abroad and in every 
language. The first edition of this book bears 
the imprint of 1883, and led to his promotion 
to a professorship in the same college. 

The success of the opening address in the 
present volume, when reprinted, was as instan- 
taneous, and even wider, than that of his first 
book. 

_ Professor Drummond never seemed to have 
been troubled with any absorbing ambition to 
publish his work, and the list of volumes which 
bear his name is small; at least one of them 
| being the result of finding a stenographer’s in- 
complete notes printed and for sale in a book- 
Store. 

- Doubtless part of the secret of his success 
is his simplicity and clearness of style, and 
the fortunate choice of subjects which, at the 
“moment of publication, were absorbing the 


OF PROFESSOR DRUMMOND. IV 


thinking world. He has something to say, 
and knows how to say it, and does so. without 
any reference to the number of pages it will 
make, should it ever be put in type. In this 
way he can take up even a commonplace sub- 
ject and discuss it with an original style and 
infuse freshness into it. 

There is no better example of this than the 
first two addresses in this book, the text of 
which is the oft-quoted eulogy of St. Paul’s 
for the love that never faileth and the 
promise of Christ of rest for the heavy-laden. 
Many a preacher would hesitate to select these 
well-known sentences for his sermon, but Pro- 
fessor Drummond has found the happy art of 
making them seem like new truths; and origi- 
nality, after all, is only the art of saying better 
what has been said before. 

Professor Drummond is an ordained minis- 
ter in the Free Church of Scotland, and is 
engaged Sundays, during the University ses- 
sions at Edinborough, in religious work among 
the students, where his meetings have . been 
attended often by as many as five or six -hun- 


vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 


dred; and while at home or abroad, his work 
has done much to help the cause of Christian 
living among young. men, the University Set- 
tlement School being the outgrowth of his 
words and example. During the week he is 
teaching science from his professor’s chair at 
Glasgow, which is a peculiar attachment for a 
divinity school, and one not found in America; 
but scientific study is earnestly pursued in such 
schools in Scotland. 

In the former work he has had as great suc- 
cess as in the latter, and has been the right- 
hand man of the evangelist, Mr. Moody, in 
many of his mass meetings, which shows the 
deep interest he takes in spreading evangelical 
truth. 

Professor Drummond’s appearance and man- 
ner are well known in this country; and, indeed, 
it was at Northfield that the first address in the 
present volume was delivered. A great scholar 
and divine has given the following analysis of 
the elements of his success : — 

“He has a certain magnetic quality, both as 
a writer and a speaker, but it can be analyzed. 


OF PROFESSOR DRUMMOND. Vii. 


He has a style, — not a style to move ‘the lonely 
rapture of lonely minds,’ but one which arrests 
the busy crowd, — clear, pleasant, flowing with 
faint hues of poetry. He is never allusive, supe- 
_Yior, strained; he does not condescend; he is 
always himself, —a courteous, unaffected gentle- 
man, with a sincere respect for his audience. He 
is an adept in the art of translating scientific 
ideas into common English, and can impart the 
touch that redeems the familiar from platitude. 
Then he has a message, a secret. No one can 
hope long to touch men by mere cleverness or 
rhetorical skill. Can he guide me? comes to be 
the question at last. Those who find the right 
road from the blows they receive on the right 
hand and the left when deviating into wrong 
roads are grateful for a wisdom which comes 
more easily; and Mr. Drummond is nothing, if 
not practical He has a system as well as a 
message. The man of one idea is not so pow- 
erful as he used to be. The age dreads nothing 
so much as the Bore, but it does not always dis- 
criminate. But a man with a system, provided 
he is not continually rattling the skeleton, is the 


Vill BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 


man of influence. A brilliant preacher of the 
day humorously compares his sermons to little . 
heaps of earth flung up by a mole: they made 
a track. In the same way, Mr. Drummond’s 
ideas have a continuity. That one-half of his 
scheme of thought is studiously kept out of 
sight does not lessen the interest taken in it; 
and, like all men whose ideas are coherent, 
he gives the impression of being at peace in 
thought.” 


“THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men 
and of angels, and have not Love, I am become 
as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And 
though I have the gift of prophecy, and under- 
stand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and 
though I have all faith, so that I could remove 
mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. 
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the 
poor, and though I give my body to be burned, 
and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing. 


5 


Love suffereth long, and is kind; 
Love envieth not; 
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
Doth not behave itself unseemly, 
Seeketh not her own, 
Is not easily provoked, 
Thinketh no evil; 
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
but rejoiceth in the truth ; 
Beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, 
endureth all things. 


Love never faileth: but whether there be 
prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be 
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be 
knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know 
in part, and we praphesy in part. But when 
that which is perfect is come, then that which 
is in part shall be done away. When I was a 
child, I spake as a child, I understood as a 
child, I thought as a child: but when I became 
a man, I put away childish things. For now we 
see through a glass, darkly; but then face to 
face: now I know in part; but then shall I 
know even as also I am known. And now 
abideth faith, hope, Love, these three; but the 
greatest of these is Love.”—1 Cor. xiii. 





THE GREATEST THING 
IN THE WORLD. 


VERY one has asked himself the 
great question of antiquity as of 
the modern world: What is the sum- 
mum bonum—the supreme good? You 
have life before you. Once only you 
can live it. What is the noblest object 
of desire, the supreme gift to covet? 
We have been accustomed to be told 
that the greatest thing in the religious 
world is Faith. That great word has 


been the key-note for centuries of the 
It 


12 THE GREATEST THING 


popular religion; and we have easily 
learned to look upon it as the greatest 
thing in the world. Well, we are 
wrong. If we have been told that, we 
may miss the mark. I have taken you, 
in the chapter which I have just read, 
to Christianity at his source; and there 
we have seen, “The greatest of these 
is love.” It is not an oversight. Paul 
was speaking of faith just a moment 
before. He says, “If I have all faith, 
so that I can remove mountains, and 

have not love, I am nothing.” So far | 
from forgetting he deliberately con- 
trasts them, “Now abideth, Faith, 
Hope, Love,” and without a moment’s 
hesitation the decision falls, ‘The 


greatest of these 1s Love.” 


IN THE WORLD. 13 


And it is not prejudice. A man is 
apt to recommend to others his own 
strong point. Love was not Paul’s 
strong point. The observing student 
can detect a beautiful tenderness grow- 
ing and ripening all through his char- 
acter as Paul gets old; but the hand 
that wrote, “The greatest of these is 
love,’ when we meet it first, is stained 
with blood. 

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians 
peculiar in singling out love as the 
summum bonum. The masterpieces 
of Christianity are agreed about it. 
Peter says, “ Above all things have 
fervent love among yourselves.” <Adove 
all things. And John goes farther, 


“God is love.’ And you remember 


14 THE GREATEST THING 


the profound remark which Paul makes 
elsewhere, ‘‘ Love is the fulfilling of 
the law.” Did you ever think what 
he meant by that? In those days men 
were working the passage to Heaven 
by keeping the Ten Commandments, 
and the hundred and ten other com- 
mandments which they had manufac- 
tured out of them. Christ said, I will 
show you a more simple way. If you 
do one thing, you will do these hun- 
dred and ten things, without ever 
thinking about them. If you love, you 
will unconsciously fulfill the whole 
law. And you can readily see for 
yourselves how that must be so. Take 
any of the commandments. ‘Thou 


shalt have no other gods before Me,” 


IN THE WORLD. 15 


If a man love God, you will not re- 
quire to tell him that. Love is the 
fulfilling of that law. ‘Take not His 
name in vain.”” Would he ever dream 
of taking His name in vain if he loved 
him? ‘Remember the Sabbath day 
to keep it holy.” Would he not be too 
glad to have one day in seven to dedi- 
cate more exclusively to the object of 
his affection? Love would fulfill all 
these laws regarding God. And so, 
if he loved Man, you would never 
think of telling him to honor his father 
and mother. He could not do any- 
thing else. It would be preposterous 
to tell him not to kill. You could only 
insult him if you suggested that he 


should not steal—how could he steal 


16 THE GREATEST THING 


from those he loved? It would be 
| superfluous to beg him not to bear false 
witness against his neighbor. If he 
loved him it would be the last thing he 
would do. And you would never 
dream of urging him not to covet what 
his neighbors had. He would rather 
they possessed it than himself. In 
this way ‘“‘ Love is the fulfilling of the. 
“law.” It is the rule for fulfilling all 
rules, the new commandment for keep- 
ing all the old commandments, Christ’s 
one secret of the Christian life. 

Now Paul has learned that; and in 
this noble eulogy he has given us the 
most wonderful and original account 
extant of the summum bonum. We 


may divide it into three parts. In the 


IN THE WORLD. 17 


beginning of the short chapter, we 
have Love contrasted; in the heart of 
it, we have Love analyzed ; toward the. 
end, we have Love defended as the 


supreme gift. 


18 THE GREATEST THING 


HE CONTRAST. 


AUL begins by contrasting Love 

with other things that men in 
those days thought much of. I shall 
not attempt to go over these things in 
detail. Their inferiority is already 
obvious. 

He contrasts it with eloquence. And 
what a noble gift it is, the power of 
playing upon the souls and wills of 
men, and rousing them to lofty pur- 
poses and holy deeds. Paul says, “If 
I speak with the tongues of men and 


of angels, and have not love, I am 


IN THE WORLD. ' 19 


become as sounding brass, or a tink-: 
ling cymbal.” And we all know 
why. We have all felt the brazenness 
of words without emotion, the hollow- 
ness, the: unaccountable unpersuasive- 
ness, of eloquence behind which lies 
no Love. | 

He contrasts it with prophecy. He 
contrasts it with mysteries. He con- 
trasts it with faith. He contrasts it 
.with charity. Why is Love greater 
than faith? Because the end is greater 
than the means. And why is it greater 
than charity? Because the whole is 
greater than the part. Love is greater 
than faith, because the end is greater 
than the means. What is the use of 


having faith? It is to connect the soul 


20 THE GREATEST THING 


with God. And what is the object 
of connecting man with God? That 
he may become like God. But God 
is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is 
inorder ‘to ..Love; the’ -endiLove; 
therefore, obviously is gteater than 
faith. It is greater than charity, 
again, because the whole is greater 
than a part. Charity is only a little 
bit of Love, one of the innumerable 
avenues of Love, and there may even 
be, and. there; is, ao seréat. dealin 
charity without Love. It is a very 
easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar 
on the street; it is generally an easier 
‘thing than not to do it. Yet Love is 
just as often in the withholding. We 


purchase relief from the sympathetic 


IN THE WORLD. 21 


feelings roused by the spectacle of 
misery, at the copper’s cost. It is too. 
cheap —too cheap for us, and often too 
dear for the beggar. If we really 
loved him we would either do more 
for him, or less. 

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice 
and martyrdom. And I beg the little 
band of would-be missionaries —and I 
have the honor to call some of you by 
this name for the first time—to remem- 
ber that though you give your bodies 
to be burned, and have not Love, it 
profits nothing—nothing! You can 
take nothing greater to the heathen 
world than the impress and reflection 
of the Love of God upon your own 


character. That is the universal lan- 


22 THE GREATEST THING 


guage. It will take you years to 
speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of 
India. From the day you land, that 
language of Love, understood by all, 
will be pouring forth its unconscious 
eloquence. It is the man who is the 
missionary, it is not his words. His 
character is his message. In the 
heart of Africa, among the great 
Lakes, I have come across black men 
and women who remembered the only 
white man they ever saw before— 
David Livingstone ; _and as you cross 
his footsteps, in that dark continent, 
men’s faces light up as they speak of 
the kind doctor who passed _ there 
years ago. They could not under- 


_ stand him; but they felt the love that 


IN THE WORLD. 23 


beat in his heart. Take into your 
new sphere of labor, where you also 
mean to lay down your life, that sim- 
ple charm, and your lifework must 
succeeds, MY ou. can’ /, take,’ “nothing 
greater, you need take nothing less. 
It is not worth while going if you take 
anything less. You may take every 
accomplishment; you may be braced 
for every sacrifice; but if you give 
your body to be burned, and have not 
Love, it will profit you and the cause 


of Christ zothing. 


24 ‘THE GREATEST THING 


THE’ ANALYSIS. 


FTER contrasting Love with these 
things, Paul, in three verses, 

very short, gives us an amazing an- 
alysis of what this supreme thing is. 
I ask you to look at it. It is a com- 
pound thing, he tells us. It is like 
light. As you have seen a man of 
science take a beam of light and pass 
it through a crystal prism, as you have 
seen it come out on the other side of 
the prism broken up into its component 
colors — red, and blue, and yellow, 


and violet, and orange, and all the 


IN THE WORLD. 25 


colors of the rainbow —so Paul passes 
this thing, Love, through the magnifi- 
cent prism of his inspired intellect, and 
it comes out on the other side broken 
up into its elements: And in these 
few words we have what one might 
call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis 
of Love. Will you observe what its 
elements are? Will you notice that 
they have common names; that they 
are virtues which we hear about every 
day; that they are things which can 
be practiced by every man in every 
place in life; and how, by a multitude 
of small things and ordinary virtues, 
the supreme thing, the swmmum bonum, 


is made up? 


° 


26 THE GREATEST THING 


The Spectrum of Love has nine in- 


gredients : 


Patience 3.045, 31. Love ‘suffereth; longi: 
Kindness i) Gio.) And As) kinda, 
Generosity aha: Ove envieth (note 
Humility . . . “Love vaunteth not itself, 

| is not puffed up.” 
Courtesy . . . “Doth not behave itself 

3 unseemly.” 

Unselfishness . “‘Seeketh not her own.” 


(Good Temper . “Is not easily provoked.” 

Guilelessness. . ‘ Thinketh no evil.” 

Sincerity . . . ‘Rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
but rejoiceth in the 
truth.” 


Patience; kindness; generosity ; 
humility; courtesy; unselfishness ; 
good temper; guilelessness; sincerity 


—these make up the supreme gift, the. 


IN THE WORLD. 27 


stature of the perfect man. You will 
observe that all are in relation to men, 
in relation to life, in relation to the 
known to-day and the near to-morrow, . 
and not to the unknown eternity. We 
hear much of love to God; Christ 
spoke much of love to man. We 
make a great deal of peace with 
heaven; Christ made much of peace 
on earth. Religion is not a strange or 
added thing, but the inspiration of the 
secular life, the breathing of an eternal 
Spirit through this temporal world. 
The supreme thing, in short, is not a 
thing at all, but the giving of a further 
finish to the multitudinous words and 
acts which make up the sum of every 


common day. 


28 THE GREATEST THING 


There is{no time to do more than 
make a passing note upon each of 
these ingredients. Love is Patzence. 
This is the normal attitude of Love; 
Love passive, Love waiting to begin; 
not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its 
work when the summons comes, but 
meantime wearing the ornament of a 
meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers 
long; beareth all things; believeth all 
things; hopeth all things. For Love 
understands, and therefore waits. 

Kindness. Love active. Have you 
ever noticed how much of Christ’s life 
was spent in doing kind things —in 
merely doing kind things? Run over it 
with that in view, and you will find that 


He spent a great proportion of His 


IN THE WORLD. 29 


time simply in making people happy, 
in doing good turns to people. There 
is only one thing greater than happi- 
ness in the world, and that is holiness; | 
and it is not in our keeping; but what 
God “as put in our power is the hap- 
piness of those about us, and that is 
largely to be secured by our being 
kind to them. 

“The greatest thing,’ says some 
one, ‘a man can do for his Heavenly 
Father is to be kind to some of His 
other children.” I wonder why it is 
that we are not all kinder than we are? 
How much the world needs it. How 
easily it is done. How instantaneously 
it acts. How infallibly it is remem- 


bered. How superabundantly it pays 


30 THE GREATEST THING 


itself back —for there is no debtor in 
the world so honorable, so superbly 
honorable, as: Love... “ Love” never 
faileth.”” Love is success, Love is 
happiness; : Love. is’ Jite.:  everar 
say,’ with Browning, “is energy of 
Life.” 
“For life, with all it yields of joy or woe 
And hope and fear, 
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning 
love, — 
How love might be, hath been indeed, 
and: ts." 
Where Love is, God is. He that 
dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God. 
God is Love. Therefore Jove. Without 
distinction, without calculation, without 
procrastination, love. Lavish it upon 


the poor, where it is very easy; espe- 


IN THE WORLD. 31 


cially upon the rich, who often need it 
most; most of all upon our equals, 
where it is very difficult, and for whom 
perhaps we each do least of all. 
There is a difference between ¢rying 
to please and giving pleasure. Give 
pleasure. Lose no chance of giving 
pleasure. For that is the ceaseless 
and anonymous triumph of a truly 
loving spirit. “I shall pass through. 
this world but once. Any good thing 
therefore that I can do, or any kind- 
ness that I can show to any human 
being, let me do it now. Let me not 
defer it or neglect it, for I shall not 
pass this way again.” 

Generosity. ‘Love envieth not.” 


This is love in competition with others. 


32 THE GREATEST THING 


Whenever you attempt a good work 
you will find other men doing the same 
kind of work, and probably doing it 
better. Envy them not. Envy is a 
feeling of ill-will to those who are in 
the same line as ourselves, a spirit of 
covetousness and detraction. How lit- 
tle Christian work even is a protection 
against un-Christian feeling. That 
most despicabie of all the unworthy 
moods which cloud a Christian’s soul 
assuredly waits for us on the threshold 
of every work, unless we are fortified . 
with this grace of magnanimity. Only 
one thing truly need the Christian 
envy, the large, rich, generous soul 
which “ envieth not.” : 


And then, after having learned all 


IN THE WORLD. 33 


that, you have to learn this further 
thing, Humzlity—to put a seal upon 
your lips and forget what you have 
done. After you have been kind, after 
Love has stolen forth into the world 
and done its beautiful work, go back 
into the shade again and say nothing 
about it. Love hides even from itself. 
Love waives even self-satisfaction. 


‘Love vaunteth not itself; is not puffed 


” 


up. 

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat 
strange one to find in this summum 
bonum: Courtesy. This is Love in 
‘society, Love in relation to etiquette. 
“Love does not behave itself unseem- 
ly. 
love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be 


” 


Politeness has been defined as 


34 THE GREATEST THING 


love in little things. And the one 
secret of politeness is to love. Love 
cannot behave itself unseemly. You 
can put the most untutored persons 
into the highest society, and if they 
have a reservoir of Love in their heart 
they will not behave themselves un- 
seemly. They simply cannot do it. 
Carlisle said of Robert Burns that 
there was no truer gentleman in Europe 
than the ploughman-poet. It was 
because he _ loved everything — the 
mouse, and the daisy, and all the 
things, great and small, that God had 
made. So with this simple passport 
he could mingle with any society, and 
enter courts and palaces from his little 


cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You 


IN THE WORLD. 35 


know the meaning of the word “ gen- 
tleman.” It means a gentle man—a 
man who does things gently with love. 
‘And that is the whole art and mystery © 
of it. The gentle man cannot in the 
nature of things do an ungentle, an 
ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle 
soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic 
mature, cannot do anything else. 


“Love doth not behave itself un- 


seemly.” 
Unselfishness. ‘Love seeketh not 
her own.’ Observe: Seeketh not 


even that which is her own. In Brit- 
ain the Englishman is devoted, and 
rightly, to his rights. But there come 
times when a man may exercise even 


the higher right of giving up his rights. 


36 THE GREATEST THING 


Yet Paul does not summon us to give 
up our rights. Love strikes much 
deeper. It would have us not seek 
them at all, ignore them, eliminate the 
personal element altogether from our 
calculations. It is not hard to give up 
our rights. They are often eternal. 
The difficult thing is to give up our- 
selves. The more difficult thing still 
is not to seek things for ourselves at 
all. After we have sought them, 
bought them, won them, deserved 
them, we have taken the cream off 
them for ourselves already. Little 
cross then to give them up. But not 
to seek them, to look every man not 
on his own things, but on the things of 


others — zd opus est. “Seekest thou 


IN THE WORLD. 37 


great things for thyself,’ said the 
prophet; “seek them not.’ Why? 
Because there is no greatness in things. 
Things cannot be great. The only 
greatness is unselfish love. Even self- 
denial in itself is nothing, is almost a 
mistake. Only a great purpose or a . 
mightier love can justify the waste. 
It is more difficult, I have said, not to 
seek our own at all, than, having 
sought it, to give it up. I must take 
that back. It is only true of a partly 
selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship 
to Love, and nothing is hard. I be- 
lieve that Christ’s “yoke” is easy. 
Christ’s yoke is just his way of taking 
life. And I believe it is an easier 


way than any other. I believe it is a 


38 THE GREATEST THING 


happier way than any other. The 
most obvious lesson in Christ’s teach- 
ing is that there is no happiness in 
having and getting anything, but only 
in giving. I repeat, there 2s no happi- 
mess in having or in getting, but only in 
giving. And half the world is on the 
wrong scent in pursuit of happiness. 
They think it consists in having and 
getting, and in being served by others. 
It consists in giving, and in serving 
others. He that would be great among 
you, said Christ, let him serve. He 
that would be happy, let him remem- 
ber that there is but one way — it is 
more blessed, it is more happy, to give 
than to receive. | 


The next ingredient is a very re- 


IN THE WORLD. 39 


markable one: Good temper. “ Love 
is not easily provoked.” Nothing could 
be more striking than to find this 
here. We are inclined to look upon 
bad temper as a very harmless weak- 
ness. We speak of it as a mere in- 
firmity of nature, a family failing, a 
matter of temperament, not a thing to 
take into very serious account in esti- 
mating a man’s character. And yet 
here, right in the heart of this analysis 
of love, it finds a place; and the Bible 
again and again returns to condemn it 
as one of the most destructive elements 
in human nature. 

The peculiarity of ill temper is that 
ieeiss the vice .(ol, the) virtuous. 17 It 


is often the one blot on an otherwise 


40 THE GREATEST THING 


noble character. You know men who 
are all but perfect, and women who 
would be entirely perfect, but for 
an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or 
“touchy’’ disposition. This compati- 
bility of ill temper with high moral 
character 1s one of the strangest and 
saddest problems of ethics. The truth 
is there are two great classes of sins — 
sins of the Body, and sins of the Dzs- 
position. The Prodigal Son may be 
taken as a type of the first, the Elder 
Brother of the second. Now, society 
has no doubt whatever as to which of 
these is the worse. Its brand falls, 
without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. 
But are we right? We have no bal- 


ance to weigh one another’s sins, and 


IN THE WORLD. 4I 


coarser and finer are but human words; 
but faults in the higher nature may be 
less venial than those in the lower, 
and to the eye of Him who is Love, a 
sin against Love may seem a hundred 
times more base. No form of vice, 
not worldliness, not greed of gold, not 
drunkenness itself, does more to un- 
Christianize society than evil temper. 
For embittering life, for breaking up 
communities, for destroying the most 
sacred relationships, for devastating 
homes, for withering up men and 
women, for taking the bloom of child- 
hood, in short, for sheer gratuitous 
misery-producing power, this influence 
stands alone.' Look at the Elder 


Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, 


42 THE GREATEST THING 


dutiful — let him get all, credit for his 
virtues — look at this man, this baby, 
sulking outside his own father’s door. 
‘He was. angry, we) Teac). (vend 
would not go in.” Look at the effect 
upon the father, upon the servants, 
upon the happiness of the guests. 
Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal 
— and how many prodigals are kept 
out of the Kingdom of God by the un- 
lovely character of those who profess 
to be inside? Analyze, as a study in 
Temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it 
gathers upon the Elder Brother’s brow. 
What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, 
pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-right- 
eousness, touchiness, doggedness, sul- 


lenness— these are the ingredients of 


IN THE WORLD. 43 


this dark and loveless soul. In vary- 
ing proportions, ‘also, these are the in- 
gredients of all ill temper. Judge if 
such sins of the disposition are not | 
worse to live in, and for others to live 
with, than sins of the body. — Did 
Christ indeed not answer the question 
Himself when He said, “I say unto 
you, that the publicans and the harlots 
go into the Kingdom of Heaven before 
you, +). Phere! isi, really ‘no, place «in 
Heaven for a disposition like this. A 
man with such a mood could only 
make Heaven miserable for all the 
people in it. Except, therefore, such 
a man be born again, he cannot, he 
simply canzot, enter the Kingdom. of 


Heaven. For it is perfectly certain — 


44 THE GREATEST THING 


and you will not misunderstand me— 
that to enter Heaven a man must take 
it with him. 

You will see then why Temper is 
significant. It is not in what it is 
alone, but in what it reveals. This 
is why I take the liberty now of speak- 
ing of it with such unusual plainness. 
It is a test for love, a symptom, a reve- 
lation of an unloving nature at bottom. 
It is the intermittent fever which be- 
speaks unintermittent disease within; 
the occasional: bubble escaping to the 
surface which betrays some rottenness 
underneath; a sample of the most hid- 
den products of the soul dropped in- 
voluntarily when off one’s guard; in a 


word, the lightning form of a hundred 


IN THE WORLD. 45 


4, 


hideous and un-Christian sins. For a 
want of patience, a-want of kindness, 
a want of generosity, a want of cour- 
tesy, a want of unselfishness, are all 
instantaneously symbolized in one flash 
of Temper. 

Hence it is not enough to deal with 
the )) Temper... °(\We:)must! goto, the 
source, and change the inmost nature, 
and the angry humors will die away 
of themselves. Souls are made sweet 
not by taking the acid fluids out, but 
by putting something in—a_ great 
Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of 
Christ." Christ, the: Spirit, of | Christ, 
interpenetrating ours, sweetens, puri- 
fies, transforms all. This only can 


eradicate what is wrong, work a chem- 


46 THE GREATEST THING: 


ical change, renovate and regenerate, 
and rehabilitate the inner man. Will 
power does not change men. Time 
does not change men. Christ does. 
Therefore ‘Let that mind be in you 
which was also in Christ Jesus.” 
Some ‘of us have not much time to 
lose. Remember, once more, that 
this is a matter of life or death. I 
cannot help speaking urgently, for 
myself, for yourselves. ‘‘Whoso shall 
offend one of these little ones, which 
believe in me, it were better for him 
that a millstone were hanged about his 
neck, and that he were drowned in the 
depth of the sea.” That is to say, it 
is the deliberate verdict of the Lord 
Jesus that it is better not to live than 


IN THE WORLD. 47 


not to love. J¢zs better not to live than 
not to love. 

Gutlelessness and Sincerity may be 
dismissed almost without a _ word. 
Guilelessness is the grace for suspi- 
cious people. And the possession of 
it is the great secret of personal influ- 
ence. You will find, if you think for a. 
moment, that the people who influence 
you are people who believe in you. 
In an atmosphere of suspicion men 
shrivel up; but in that atmosphere: 
they expand, and find encouragement 
and educative fellowship. It is a won- 
derful thing that here and there in this 
hard, uncharitable world there should 
still be left a few rare souls who think 


no evil. This is the great unworldli- 


48 THE GREATEST THING 


ness. Love “thinketh no evil,” im- 
putes no motive, sees the bright side, 
puts the best construction on every 
action. What *a delightful state of 
mind to live in! What a stimulus and 
benediction even to meet with it for 
a day! To be trusted “is to be saved. 
And if we try to influence or elevate 
others, we shall soon see that success 
is in proportion to their belief of our 
belief }in them. For: the: respect’) of 
another is the first restoration of the. 
self-respect: a man has lost; our ideal 
of what he is becomes to him the hope 
and pattern of what he may become. 

“Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth in the truth.” I have called 


this Szucerity from the words rendered 
g 


IN THE WORLD. 49 


in the Authorized Version by “re- 
joiceth in the truth.” And, certainly, 
were this the real translation, nothing 
could be more just. For he who 
loves will love Truth not less than 
men. He will rejoice in the Truth — 
rejoice not in what he has been taught 
to believe; not in this Church’s doc- 
trine or in that; not in this ism or in 
that ism; but “in ¢he Truth.” He 
will accept only what is real; he will 
strive to get at facts; he will search 
for 7ruth with a humble and unbiassed | 
mind, and cherish whatever he finds 
at any sacrifice. But the more literal 
translation of the Revised Version 
calls for just such a sacrifice for 
truth’s sake here. For what Paul 


50 THE GREATEST THING 


really meant is, as we there read, 
* Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but 
rejoiceth with the truth,” a quality 
which probably no one English word 
—and certainly not . Szzcerity — ade- 
quately defines. It includes, perhaps — 
more strictly, the self-restraint which 
refuses to make capital out of others’ 
faults; the charity which delights not 
m exposing the weakness of others, 


) 


but. “covereth’ all things;” the sin- 
cerity of purpose which endeavors to 
see things as they are, and rejoices to 
find them better than suspicion feared 
or calumny denounced. 

So much for the analysis of Love. 
Now the business of our lives is to 


have these things fitted into our char- 


IN THE WORLD. 5r 


acters. That is the supreme work to 
which we need to address ourselves in 
this world, to learn Love. Is life not 
full of opportunities for learning Love? 
Every man and woman every day has 
a thousand of them. The world is 
not a playground; it is a schoolroom. 
Life is not a holiday, but an educa- 
tion. And the one eternal lesson for 
us all is how better we can love. What 
makes a man a good cricketer? Prac- 
tice. What makes a man a good 
artist, a good sculptor, a good musi- 
cian? Practice. What makes'a man 
a good linguist, a good stenographer? 
Practice. What makes a man a good 
man? Practice. Nothing else. There 


is nothing capricious about religion. 


YH ort ponte ee 
fj Ie el 5F bey. 3 tel GS br Rt we 
je pe 3 oa oH ih ; 


§2 THE GREATEST THING 


We do not get the soul in different 
ways, under different laws, from those 
in which we get the body and the 


mind. If aman does not exercise his 


arm he develops no biceps muscle; 


and if a man does not exercise’ his 


soul, he requires no muscle in his soul, ° 


no strength of character, no vigor of 
moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual 
growth. Love is nota thing of enthu- 
siastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, 
manly, vigorous expression of the 
whole round Christian character — the 
Christlike nature in its fullest develop- 
ment. And the constituents of this 
great character are only to be built up 


by ceaseless practice. 


What was Christ doing in the car- 


IN THE WORLD. oie 


penter’s shop? Practicing. Though 
perfect, we read that He /earned obe- 
dience, and grew in wisdom and in 
favor with God. Do not quarrel there- 
fore with your lot in life. Do not com- 
plain of its neverceasing cares, its 
petty environment, the vexations you 
have to stand, the small and sordid 
souls you have to live and work with. 
Above all, do not resent temptation ; 
do not be perplexed because it seems 
to thicken round you more and more, 
and ceases neither for effort nor for 
agony nor prayer. That is your prac- 
tice. That is the practice which God 
appoints you; and it is having its work 
in making you patient, and humble, 


and generous, and unselfish, and kind, 


54 THE GREATEST THING 


and courteous. Do not grudge the 
hand that is moulding the still too 
sShapeless image within you. It is 
growing more beautiful, though you 
see it not, and every touch of tempta- 
tion may add to its perfection. There- 
fore keep in the midst of life. Do not 
isolate yourself. Be among men, and 
among things, and among troubles, 
and difficulties, and obstacles. You 
remember Goethe’s words: Es d2ldet 
ein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein 
Charakter in dem Strom der Welt. 
“Talent develops itself in solitude; 
character in the stream of life.” Tal-. 
ent develops itself in solitude —the 
talent of prayer, of faith, of meditation, 


of seeing the unseen; character grows 


IN THE WORLD. 55 


in the stream of the world’s life. That 
chiefly is where men are to learn love. 

How? Now, how? To make it 
easier, I have named a few of the ele- 
ments of love. But these are only 
elements. Love itself can never be 
defined. Light is a something more 
than the sum of its ingredients —a 
glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. 
And love is something more than all 
its elements — a palpitating, quivering, 
sensitive, livjng thing. By synthesis 
of all the colors, men can make white- 
ness, they cannot make light. By 
synthesis of, all the virtues, men can 
make virtue, they cannot make love. 
How then are we to have this tran- 


scendent living whole conveyed into 


56 THE GREATEST THING 


our souls? We brace our wills to 
secure it. We try to copy those who 
have it. We lay down rules about it, 
We watch. We pray. But these 
things alone will not bring love into 
our nature. Love is an effect. And 
only as we ‘fulfill the right condition 
can we have the effect produced. 
Shall I tell you what the cause is? 

If you turn to the Revised Version 
of the First Epistle of John you will 
find these words: “We love because 
He first loved us.’”’ ‘We love,” not 
o Wes love “717m. hat eeu way 
the old version has it, and it is quite 
wrong. “ We love — because He first 
loved us.” Look at that word ‘“ be- 


cause.” It is the cause of which I have 


IN THE WORLD. 57 


spoken. ‘ Because He first loved us,” 
the effect follows that we love, we love 
Him, we love all men. We cannot 
help it. Because He loved us, we 
love, we* love everybody. Our heart 
is slowly changed. , Contemplate the 
love of Christ, and you will love. 
Stand before that mirror, reflect 
Christ's character, and you will be 
changed into the same image from 
tenderness to tenderness. There is no 
other way. You cannot love to order. 
You can only look at the lovely object, 
and fall in love with it, and grow into 
likeness to it. And so look at this 
Perfect Character, this Perfect Life. 
Look at the great Sacrifice as He laid 


down Himself, all through life, and 


58 THE GREATEST THING 


upon the Cross of Calvary; and you 
must love Him. And loving Him, 
you must become like Him. Love 
begets love. It is a process of induc- 
tion. Put a piece of irof in the 
presence of an electrified body, and 
that piece of iron for a time becomes 
electrified. It is changed into a tem- 
porary magnet in the mere presence 
of a permanent. magnet, and as long 
as you leave the two side by side, they 
are both magnets alike. Remain side 
by side with Him who loved us, and 
gave Himself for us, and you too will 
become a permanent magnet, a _per- 
manently attractive force; and like 
Him you will draw all men unto you, 


like Him you will be drawn unto all 


IN THE WORLD. 59 


men. That is the inevitable effect of 
Love. Any man who fulfills- that 
cause must have that effect produced — 
in him. Try to give up the idea that 
religion comes to us by chance, or by © 
mystery, or by caprice. It comes to 
us by natural law, or by supernatural 
law, for all law is Divine. Edward 
Irving went to see a dying boy once, 
and when he entered the room he just 
put his hand on the sufferer’s head, and 
said, “My boy, God loves you,’ and 
went away. And the boy started from 
his bed, and called out to the people 
in the house, ‘‘God loves: me! God 
lovesme!’’ It changed that boy. The 
sense that God loved him overpowered 


him, melted him down, and began the 


60 THE GREATEST THING 


creating of a new heart in him. And 
that is how the love of God melts down. 
the unlovely heart in man, and begets 
in him the new creature, who is patient 
and humble and gentle and unselfish. 
_And there is no other way to get it. 
There is no mystery about it. We 
love others, we love everybody, we 
love our enemies, because He _ first 


loved us. 


IN THE WORLD. 61 


THE DEFENCE. 


OW I have a closing sentence or 

two to add about Paul’s reason 
for singling out love as the supreme 
possession. It is a very remarkable 
reason. In a single word it is this: 2 
lasts:.»‘* Loves’ urges: Paul, “never 
faileth.” Then he begins again one 
of his marvelous lists of the. great 
things of the day, and exposes them 
oné by one. He runs over the things © 
that men thought were going to last, 
and shows that they are all fleeting, 


temporary, passing away. 


62 THE GREATEST THING 


“ Whether there be prophecies, they 
shall fail.’ It was the mother’s am- 
bition for her boy in those days that 
he should become a prophet. For hun- 
dreds of years God had never spoken 
by means of any prophet, and at that 
time the prophet was greater than 
the King. Men waited. wistfully for 
another messenger to come, and hung 
upon his lips when he appeared as 
upon the very voice of God. ~ Paul 
says, ‘‘Whether there be prophecies, 
they shall fail.” This book is full of 
prophecies. One by one they have 
“failed ;”’ that is, having been fulfilled 
their work is finished; they have | 
nothing more to do now in the world 


except to feed a devout man’s faith. 


IN THE WORLD. 63 


Then Paul talks about tongues. 
That was another thing that was greatly 
coveted. “Whether there be tongues, 
they shall cease.” As we all know, 
many, many centuries have passed 
since tongues have been known in this 
world. They have ceased. Take it © 
in any sense you like. Take it, for 
illustration merely, as languages in 
general—a sense which was not in 
Paul’s mind at all, and which though 
it cannot give us the specific lesson 
will point the general truth. Consider 
the words in which these chapters were 
written—Greek. It has gone. Take 
the Latin—the other great tongue 
of those days. It ceased long ago. 
Lock at the Indian language. It is 


64 THE GREATEST THING 


ceasing. The language of Wales, of 
Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is 
dying before our eyes. The most 
popular book in the English tongue at 
the present time, except the Bible, is 
one of Dickens’s works, his Pickwick 
Papers. It is largely written in the 
language of London street-life; and 
experts assure us that in fifty years it 
will be unintelligible to the average 
English reader. 

Then Paul goes farther, and with 
even greater boldness adds, “‘ Whether 
there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
away.’ The wisdom of the ancients, 
where is it? It is wholly gone. A 
schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir 


Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge 


IN THE WORLD. 65 


thas vanished away. You put yester- 
day’s newspaper in the fire. Its 
knowledge has vanished away. You 
buy the old editions of the great ency- 
clopzdias for a few pence. Their 
knowledge has vanished away. Look 
how the coach has been superseded by 
the use of steam. Look how elec- 
tricity has superseded that, and swept 
a hundred almost new inventions into 
oblivion. One of the greatest living 
authorities, Sir William Thompson, 
said the other day, “‘ The steam-engine 
is passing away.” - ‘Whether there 
be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” 
At every workshop you will see, in 
the back yard, a heap of old iron, a 


few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, 


66 THE GREATEST THING 


broken and eaten with rust. Twenty 
years ago that was the pride of the 
city. Men flocked in from the country 
to see the great invention; now it is 
superseded, its day is done. And all 
the boasted science and philosophy of 
this day will soon be old. But yester- . 
day, in the University of Edinburgh, 
the greatest figure in the faculty was 
Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of 
chloroform. The other day his suc- 
cessor and nephew, Professor Simp- 
son, was asked by the librarian of the 
University to go to the library and 
pick out the books on his subject that 
were no longer needed. And his re- 
ply to the librarian was this: “Take 


every text-book that is more than ten 


IN THE WORLD. 67 


years old, and put it down in the cel- 


” 


Jar.” Sir James Simpson was a great 
authority only a few years ago: men 
came from all parts of the earth to 
consult him; and almost the whole 
teaching of that time is consigned by 
the science of to-day to oblivion. And 
in every branch of science it is the 
same: ‘Now we know in part. We 
see through a glass darkly.” 

Can you tell me anything that is 
going to last? Many things Paul did 
not condescend to name. He did not 
mention money, fortune, fame; but he 
picked out the great things of his time, 
the things the best men thought had 
something in them, and brushed them 


peremptorily aside. Paul had no 


68 THE GREATEST THING 


charge against these things in them- 
selves. All he said about them was 
that they would not last. They were 
great things, but not supreme things. 
There were things beyond them. 
What we are stretches past what we 
do, beyond what we possess. Many 
things that men denounce as sins are 
not sins; but they are temporary. 
And that is a favorite argument of 
the New Testament. John says of the 
world, not that it is wrong, but simply 
that it “passeth away.” There is a 
great deal in the world that is delight- 
ful and beautiful; there is a great deal 
in it that is great and engrossing; but 
it will not last. All that is in the 
world, the lust of the eye, the lust of 


IN THE WORLD. 69 


the flesh, and the pride of life, are but 
for a little while. Love not the world 
therefore. Nothing that it contains 
is worth the life and consecration of 
an immortal soul. The immortal soul 
must give itself to something that is 
immortal. And the only immortal 
things are these: ‘‘ Now abideth faith, 
hope, love, but the greatest of these is 
iove.” 

Some think the time may come when 
two of these three things will also pass 
away —faith into sight, hope into fru- 
ition. Paul does not say so. We 
know but little now about the condi- 
tions of the life that is to come. But 
what is certain is that Love must last. 
God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet 


7O - THE GREATEST THING © 


therefore that everlasting gift, that one 
thing which it is certain is going to 
stand, that one coinage which will be 
current in the Universe when all the 
other coinages of all the nations of the 
world shall be useless and unhonored. 
You will give yourselves to many 
things, give yourself first to Love. 
Hold things in their proportion. Hold 
things in their proportion. Let at least 
the first great object of our lives be 
to achieve the character defended in 
these words, the character —and it is 
the character of Christ — which is built 
round Love. | 

I have said this thing is eternal. 
Did you ever notice how continually 


John associates love and faith with 


IN THE WORLD. 71 


eternal life? I was not told when I 
was a boy that “God so loved the 
world that He gave His only-begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should have everlasting life.” What 
I was told, I remember, was, that God 
so loved the world that, if I trusted in 
Him, I was to have a thing called 
peace, or I was to have rest, or I was 
to have joy, or I was to have safety. 
But I had to find out for myself that 
whosoever trusteth in Him—that is, 
whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only 
the avenue to Love — hath everlasting 
fife. The Gospel offers a man life. 
Never offer men a thimbleful of Gos- 
pel. Do not offer them merely joy, 


or merely peace, or merely rest, or 


72 THE GREATEST THING 


merely safety; tell them how Christ 
came to give mén a more abundant 
life than they have, a life abundant in 
love, and therefore abundant in salva- 
tion for themselves, and large in enter- 
prise for the alleviation and redemption 
of the world. Then only can the 
_ Gospel take hold of the whole of a 
man, body, soul, and spirit, and give 
to each part of his nature its exercise 
and reward. Many of the current: 
Gospels are addressed only to a part 
of man’s nature. They offer peace, 
not life; faith, not Love; justification, 
not regeneration. And men slip back 
again from such religion because it 
has never really held them. Their 


nature was not all in it. It offered no 


IN THE WORLD. 73 


deeper and gladder life-current than 
the life that was lived before. Surely 
it stands to reason that only a fuller. 
love can compete with the love of the 
world. 

To love abundantly is to live abun- 
dantly, and to love forever is to live 
forever. Hence, eternal life is inex- 
tricably bound up with love. We 
want to live forever for the same rea- 
son that we want to live to-morrow. 
Why do you want to live to-morrow ? 
It is because there is some one who 
loves you, and whom you want to see 
to-morrow, and be with, and love 
back. There is no other reason why 
we should live on than that we love’ 


and are beloved. It is when a man 


74 THE GREATEST THING 


has no one to iove him that he com- 
mits suicide. So long as he has 
friends, those who love him and whom 
he loves, he will live, because to live 
is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, 
it will keep him in life; but let that 
go and he has no contact with life, no 
reason to live. He dies by his own 
hand. Eternal life also is to know 
God, and God is love. This is Christ’s 
own definition. Ponder it. ‘‘This is 
life eternal, that they might know Thee 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
whom Thou has sent.’’ Love must be 
eternal. It is what God is. On the 
last analysis, then, love is life. Love 
never faileth, and life never faileth, so 


long as there is love. That is the 


IN THE WORLD. 75 


philosophy of what Paul is showing us; 
the reason why in the nature of things 
Love should be the supreme thing — 
because it is going to last; because in 
the nature of things it is an Eternal 
Life. It is a thing that we are liv. 
ing now, not that we get when we die; 
that we shall have a poor chance of 
getting when we die unless we are 
living now. No worse fate can befall 
a man in this world than to live and 
grow old alone, unloving, and unloved. 
To be lost is to live in an unregenerate 
condition, loveless and unloved; and 
to be saved is to love; and he that 
dwelleth in love dwelleth already in 
God. For God is Love. 

Now I have all but finished. How 


76 THE GREATEST THING 


many of you will join me in reading 
this chapter once a week for the next 
three months? A man did that once 
and it changed his whole life. Will 
you doit? Itis for the greatest thing 
in the world. You might begin by 
reading it every day, especially the 
verses which describe the perfect char- 
acter. ‘‘Love suffereth long, and is 
kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth 
not itself.’ Get these ingredients into 
your life. Then everything that you 
do is eternal. It is worth doing. It 
is worth giving time to. No man can 
become a saint in his sleep; and to 
fulfill the condition required demands 
a certain amount of prayer and medi- 


tation and time, just as improvement 


IN THE WORLD. 77 


in any direction, bodily or mental, re- 
quires preparation and care. Address 
yourselves to that one thing; at any 
cost have this transcendent character 
exchanged for yours. You will find 
as you look back upon your life that 
the moments that stand out, the mo- 
ments when you have really lived, are 
the moments when you have. done 
things in a spirit of love. As memory 
scans the past, above and beyond all 
the transitory pleasures of life, there 
leap forward those supreme hours 
when you have been enabled to do 
unnoticed kindnesses to those round 
about you, things too trifling to speak 
about, but which you feel have entered 


into your eternal life. I have seen 


78 THE GREATEST THING 


almost all the beautiful things God has 
made; I have enjoyed almost every 
pleasure that he has planned for man; 
and yet as I look back I see standing 
out above all the life that has gone 
four or five short experiences when the 
love of God reflected itself in some 
poor imitation, some small act of love 
of mine, and these seem to be the 
things which alone of all one’s life 
abide. Everything else in all our 
lives is transitory. Every other good 
is visionary. But the acts of love 
which no man knows about, or can 
ever know about — they never fail. 

In the Book of Matthew, where the 
Judgment Day is depicted for us in 


the imagery of One seated upon a 


IN THE WORLD. 79 


throne and dividing the sheep from 
the goats, the test of a man then is not, 
**How have I believed?” but “How 
lave I loved?” The test of religion, 
the final test of religion, is not relig- 
iousness, but Love. I say the final 
test of religion at that great Day is 
not relgiousness, but Love; not what I 
have done, not what I have believed, 
not what I have achieved, but how I 
have discharged the common charities 
of hfe. Sins of commission in that 
awful indictment are not even referred 
to. By what we have not done, dy 
sins of omission, we are judged. It 
could not be otherwise. For the with- 
holding of love is the negation of the 
spirit of Christ, the proof that we 


80 THE GREATEST THING 


never knew Him, that for us He lived 
in vain. It means that He suggested 
nothing in all our thoughts, that He 
inspired nothing in all our lives, that 
we were not once near enough to Him 
to be seized with the spell of His com- 
passion forthe world. It means that — 
“T lived for myself, I thought for myself, 
For myself, and none beside — 


Just as if Jesus had never lived, ° 
As if He had never died.” 


It is the Son of Man before whom 
the nations of the world shall be 
gathered. It is in the presence of 
Humanity that we shall be charged. 
And the spectacle itself, the mere 
sight of it, will silently judge each 


one. Those will be there whom we 


IN THE WORLD. 81! 


have met and helped; or there, the 
unpitied multitude whom we neglected 
or despised. No other witness need 
be summoned. No other charge than 
lovelessness shall be preferred. Be 
not deceived. The words which all of 
us shall one Day hear sound not of 
theology but of life, not of churches 
and saints but of the hungry and the 
poor, not of creeds and doctrines but 
of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles 
and prayer-books but of cups of cold 
water in the name of Christ. Thank 
God the Christianity of to-day is com- 
ing nearer the world’s need. Live to 
help that on. Thank God men know 
better, by a hairsbreadth, what religion 


is, what God is, who Christ is, where 


82 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, 
} 


Christ is. Who is Christ? He who 
fed the hungry,’ clothed the naked, | 
visited the sick. And where is Christ? 
Where ?—whoso shall receive a little 
child in My name receiveth Me. And 
who are Christ’s? Every one that 
loveth is born of God. 


_—_ 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


“COME unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am 
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, 
and my burden is light.” 


PAX VOBISCUM. 


HEARD the other morning a ser- 

mon by a distinguished preacher 
upon ‘ Rest.’’ It was full of beauti- 
ful thoughts; but when I came to ask 
myself, ‘How does he say I can get 
Rest?” there was no answer. The 
sermon was sincerely meant to be 
practical, yet it contained no experi- 
ence that seemed to me to be tangi- 
ble, nor any advice which could help 
me to find the thing itself as I went 
about the world that afternoon. Yet 


this omission of the only important 
87 


88 PAX VOBISCUM. 


problem was not the fault of the 
preacher. The whole popular religion 
is in the twilight here. And when 
pressed for really working specifics for 
the experiences with which # deals, 
it falters, and seems to lose itself in 
mist. 

The want of connection between the 
great words of religion and every-day 
life has bewildered and discouraged 
all of us. Christianity possesses the 
noblest words in the language; its 
literature overflows with terms expres- 
sive of the greatest and happiest 
moods which can fill the soul of man. 
Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light 
— these words occur with such per- 


sistency in hymns and prayers that an 


PEACE BE WITH you. 89 


observer might think they formed the - 
staple of Christian experience. But 
on coming to close quarters with the 
actual life of most of us, how surely 
would he be disenchanted! I do not 
think we ourselves are aware how 
much our religious life is made up of 
phrases; how much of what we call 
Christian experience is only a dialect 
of the Churches, a mere religious 
phraseology with almost nothing be- 
hind it in what we really feel and 
know... 

To some of us, indeed, the Chris- 
tian experiences seem further away 
than when we took the first steps im 
the Christian life. That life has not 
opened out as we had hoped; we do 


go PAX VOBISCUM. 


not regret our religion, but we are dis. 
appointed with it. There are times, 
perhaps, when wandering notes from 
a diviner music stray into our spirits ; 
but these experiences come at few and 
fittul moments. We have no sense of 
possession in them. When they visit 
us, it is a surprise. When they leave 
us, it is without explanation. When 
we wish their return, we do not know 
how to secure it. : 

All which points to a religion with- 
out solid base, and a poor and flicker- 
ing life. It means a great bankruptcy 
in those experiences which give Chris- 
tianity its personal solace and make it 
attractive to the world, and a great 


uncertainty as to any remedy. It is 


PEACE BE WITH YOU. or 


as if we knew everything about health 
— except the way to get it. 

I am quite sure that the difficulty 
does not lie in the fact that men are 
not in earnest. This is simply not the 
fact. All around us Christians are 
wearing themselves out in trying to be 
better. The amount of spiritual long- 
ing in the world—in the hearts of 
unnumbered thousands of men and 
women in whom we should never sus- 
pect it; among the wise and thought- 
ful; among the young and gay, who 
seldom assuage and never betray their 
thirst — this is one of the most wonder- 
ful and touching facts of life. It is 
not more heat that is needed, but more 


light; not more force, but a wiser di- 


92 PAX VOBISCUM. 


rection to be given to very real energies 
already there. 

The Address which follows is offered 
as an humble contribution to this prob- 
lem, and in the hope that it may help 
some who are “seeking Rest and find- 
ing none” to a firmer footing on one 
great, solid, simple principle which 
underlies not the Christian experiences 
alone, but all experiences, and all life. 

What Christian experience wants is 
thread, a vertebral column, method. It 
is impossible to believe that there is 
no remedy for its unevenness and di- 
shevelment, or that the remedy is a 
secret. The idea, also, that some few 
men, by happy chance or happier 
temperament, have been given the 


PEACE BE WITH YOU. 93 


secret —as if there were some sort of 
knack or trick of it — is wholly incredi- 
ble. Religion must ripen its fruit for 
every temperament; and the; way even 
into its highest heights must be by a 
gateway through which the peoples of 
the world may pass. 

I shall try to lead up to this gateway 
by a very familiar path. But as that 
path is strangely unfrequented, and 
even unknown,‘ where it passes into 
the religious sphere, I must dwell for 
a moment on the commonest of com- 


monplaces. 


94 PAX VOBISCUM. 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 


OTHING that happens in the 
world happens by chance. God 

is a God of order. Everything is 
arranged upon definite principles, and 
never at random. The world, even 
the religious world, is governed by 
law. Character is governed by law. 
Happiness is governed by law. The 
Christian experiences are governed by 
law. Men, forgetting this, expect 
Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into 
their souls from the air like snow or 


rain. But in point of fact they do not 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 95 


do so; and if they did they would no 
less have their origin in previous ac- 
tivities and be controlled by natural 
laws. Rain and snow do drop from 
the air, but not without a long pre- 
vious history. They are the mature 
effects of former causes. Equally so 
are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, 
too, have each a previous history. 
Storms and winds and calms are not 
accidents, but are brought about by 
antecedent circumstances. Rest and 
Peace are but calms in man’s inward 
nature, and arise through causes as 
definite and as inevitable. 

Realize it thoroughly: it is a me- 
thodical not an accidental world. If a 


housewife turns out a good cake, it is 


06 PAX VOBISCUM. 


the result of a sound receipt, carefully 
applied. She cannot mix the assigned 
ingredients and fire them for the ap- 
propriate time without producing the 
result. It is not she who has made the 
cake; it is nature. She brings related 
things together; sets causes at work; 
these causes bring about the result. 
She is not a creator, but an interme- 
diary. She does not expect. random 
causes to produce specific effects — 
random ingredients would only pro- 
duce random cakes. So it is in 
the making of Christian experiences. 
Certain lines are followed; certain 
effects are the result. These effects 
cannot but be the result. But the 


result can never take place without 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 97 


the previous cause. To expect results 
without antecedents is to expect cakes 
without ingredients. That impossi- 
bility is precisely the almost universal 
expectation. | 

Now what I mainly wish to do is to 
help you firmly to grasp this simple 
principle of Cause and Effect in the 
spiritual world. And instead of ap- 
plying the principle generally to each 
of the Christian experiences in turn, I 
shall examine its application to one in 
some little detail The one I shall 
select is Rest. And I think any one 
who follows the application in this 


single instance will be able to apply it 


- for himself to all the others. 


Take such a sentence as this: Afri- 


98 PAX VOBISCUM. 


can explorers are subject to fevers 
which cause restlessness and delirium. 
Note the expression, ‘cause restless- 
ness.” estlessness has a cause. Clearly 
then, any one who wished to get rid 
of restlessness would proceed at once 
to deal with the cause. If that were 
not removed, a doctor might pre- 
scribe a hundred things, and all might 
be taken in turn, without producing 
the least effect. Things are so ar- 
ranged in the original planning of the 
world that certain effects must follow 
certain causes, and. certain causes 
must be abolished before certain effects” 
can be removed. Certain parts of 
Africa are inseparably linked with the 


physical experience called fever; this 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 99 


fever is in turn infallibly linked with a 
mental experience called restlessness 
and delirium. To abolish the mental 
experience the radical method would 
be to abolish the physical experience, 
and the way of abolishing the physical 
experience would be to abolish Africa, 
or to cease to go there. Now this 
holds good for all other forms of Rest- 
lessness. Every other form and kind 
of Restlessness in the world has a 
definite cause, and the particular kind 
of Restlessness can only be removed 
by removing the allotted cause. 

All this is also true of Rest. Rest- 
lessness has a cause: must not Rest 
have a cause? Necessarily. If it 


were a chance world we would not 


100 PAX VOBISCUM. 


expect this; but, being a methodical 
world, it cannot be otherwise. Rest, 
physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, 
every kind of rest, has a cause as cer- 
tainly as restlessness. Now causes 
are discriminating. There is one kind 
of cause for every particular effect, 
and no other; and if one particular 
effect is desired, the corresponding 
cause must be set in motion. It is no 
use proposing finely devised schemes, 
or going through general pious exer- 
cises in the hope that somehow Rest 
will come. The Christian life is not 
casual, “but ‘causal... Allmature “isa 
standing protest against the absurdity 
of expecting to secure spiritual effects, 


or any effects, without the employment 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. IOLt 


of appropriate causes. The Great 
Teacher dealt what ought to have been 
the final blow to this infinite irrelevancy 
by a single question, ‘Do men gather 
grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?”’ 

Why, then, did the Great Teacher 
not educate His followers fully? Why 
did He not tell us, for example, how 
such a thing as Rest might be obtained ? 
The answer is, that He did. But 
plainly, explicitly, in so many words? 
Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many 
words. He assigned Rest to its cause, 
in words with which each of us has 
been familiar from his earliest child- 
hood. 

He begins, you remember—for you 


at once know the passage I refer to— 


102 PAX VOBISCUM. 


almost as if Rest could be had without 
any) causes2.""Gome unto wave, be 
says, “and I will gzve you Rest.” 

Rest, apparently, was a favor to be 
bestowed; men had but to come to 
Him; He would give it to every appli- 
cant. But the next sentence takes 
that all back. The qualification, in- 
deed, is added instantaneously. For 
what the first sentence seemed to give 
was next thing to an impossibility. 
For how, in a literal sense, can Rest 
be given? One could no more give 
away Rest than he could give away 
Laughter. We speak of “causing ”’ 
laughter, which we can do; but we 
cannot give it away. When we speak 


of giving pain, we know perfectly well 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 103 


we ‘cannot give pain away. And 
when we aim at. giving pleasure, all 
that we do is to arrange a set of cir- 
cumstances in such a way as that. 
these shall cause pleasure. Of course 
there is a sense, and a very wonderful 
sense, in which a Great Personality 
breathes upon all who come within its 
influence an abiding peace and trust. 
- Men can be to other men as the shadow 
of a great rock in a thirsty land. 
Much more Christ; much more Christ 
as Perfect Man; much more still as 
Savior of the world. But it is not this 
of which I speak. When Christ said 
He would give men rest, He meant 
simply that He would put them in the 


way of it. By no act of conveyance 


104 PAX VOBISCUM. 


would, or could, He make over His 
own Rest to them. He could give 
them His receipt for it. That was all. 
But He would not make it for them; 
for one thing, it was not in His plan to 
make it for them; for another thing, 
men were not so planned that it could 
be made for them; and for yet another 
thing, it was a thousand times better 
that they should make it for them- 
selves. 

That this is the meaning becomes 
obvious from the wording of the second 
sentence: “Learn of Me and ye shall 
find Rest.” Rest, that is to say, is 
not a thing that can be given, but a 
thing to be acquired. It comes not by 


an act, but by a process. It is not to 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 105 


be found in a happy hour, as one finds 
a treasure; but slowly, as one finds 
knowledge. It could indeed be no 
more found in a moment than could 
knowledge. A soil has to be prepared 
for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow 
in one climate and not in another; at 
one altitude and not at another. Like 
all growths it will have an orderly de- 
velopment and mature by slow degrees. 

The nature of this slow process 
Christ clearly defines when He says 
we are to achieve Rest by J/earning. 
ear or Men We. says, | and ye 
shall find Rest to your souls.” Now 
consider the extraordinary originality 
of this utterance. How novel the con- 


nection between these two words, 


106 PAX VOBISCUM. 


“Learn” and “Rest”! How few of 
us have ever associated them— ever 
thought that Rest was a thing to be 
learned; ever laid ourselves out for it 
as we would to learn a language; ever 
practiced it as we would practice the 
violin? Does it not show how entirely 
new Christ’s teaching still 1s to the 
world, that so old and threadbare an ° 
aphorism should still. be so little ap- 
plied? The last thing most of us 
would have thought of would have 
been to associate Rest with Work. 
What must one work at? What is 
that which if duly learned will find the 
soul of man in Rest? . Christ answers 
without the least hesitation. He speci- 


fies two things— Meekness and Low- 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 107 


linessus earn: of! Me") He.) says, 
“for I am meek and J/owly in heart.” 
Now, these two things are not chosen 
at random. To these accomplish- 
ments, in a special way, Rest is at- 
tached. |. éarn these, in. short, and 
you have already found Rest. These 
as they stand are direct causes of 
Rest; will produce it at once; cannot 
but produce it at once. And if you 
think for a single moment, you will 
see how this is necessarily so, for 
causes are never arbitrary, and the 
connection between antecedent and 
consequent here and everywhere lies 
deep in the nature of things. 

What is the connection, then? I 


answer by a further question. What 


108 PAX VOBISCUM. 


are the chief causes of Unrest? If 
you know yourself, you will answer 
Pride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you 
look back upon the past years of your 
life, is it not true that its unhappiness 
has chiefly come from the succession 
of personal. mortifications, and almost 
trivial disappointments which the in- 
tercourse of life has brought you? 
Great trials come at lengthened inter- 
vals, and we rise to breast them; but 
it is the petty friction of our every 
day life with one another, the jar 
of business or of work, the discord 
of the domestic circle, the collapse of 
. our ambition, the crossing of our will 
or the taking down of our conceit, 


which make inward peace -impossible. 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 109 


| Wounded vanity, then, disappointed 
hopes, unsatisfied selfishness — these 
are the old, vulgar, universal sources 
-of man’s unrest. 

Now it is obvious why Christ pointed 
out as the two chief objects for attain- 
ment the exact opposites of these. To 
Meekness and Lowliness these things 
simply do not exist. They cure unrest 
by making it impossible. These reme- 
dies do not trifle with surface symp- 
toms ; they strike at once at removing 
causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a 
self-centered life can be removed at 
once by learning Meekness and Low- 
liness of heart. He who learns them 
is for ever proof against it. He lives 


henceforth a charmed life. Chris- 


110 PAX VOBISCUM. 


tianity is a fine inoculation, a transfu- 
sion of healthy blood into an anzmic 
or poisoned soul. No fever can attack 
a perfectly sound body; no fever of 
unrest can disturb a soul which has 
breathed the air or learned the ways 
of Christ. Men sigh for the wings of 
a dove that they may fly away and be 
at rest. But flying away will not help 
us. “The Kingdom of God is wethin 
you.’ We aspire to the top to look 
for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water 
rests only when it gets to the lowest 
place. So do men. Hence, be lowly. 
The man who has no opinion of him- 
self at all can never be hurt if others 
do not acknowledge him. Hence, be 


meek. He who is without expecta- 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. III 


tion cannot fret if nothing comes to 
him. It is self-evident that these 
things are so. The lowly man and 
the meek man are really above all 
other men, above all other things. 
They dominate the world because they 
do not care for it. The miser does 
not possess gold, gold possesses him. 
But the meek possess it. ‘The meek,” 
said Christ, “inherit the earth.” They 
do not buy it; they do not conquer it; 
but they inherit it. 

There are people who go about the 
world looking out for slights, and they : 
are necessarily miserable, for they find 
them at every turn — especially the im- 
aginary ones. One has the same pity 


for such men as for the very poor. 


II2 PAX VOBISCUM. 


They are the morally illiterate. They 
have had no real education, for they 
have never learned how to live. Few 
men know how to live. We grow up 
at random, carrying into mature life 
the merely animal methods and mo- 
tives which we had as little children. 
And it does not occur to us that all 
this must be changed; that much of it 
must be revised; that life is the finest 
of the Fine Arts; that it has to be 
learned with lifelong patience, and that 
the years of our pilgrimage are all too 
short to master it triumphantly. 

Yet this is what Christianity is for — 
to teach men the Art of Life. And 
‘its whole curriculum lies in one word — 


‘Learn of Me.’ Unlike most educa- 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. Il3 


_ tion, this is almost purely personal; it 
is not to be had from books or lectures 
or creeds or doctrines. It is a study 
from the life. Christ never said much 
in mere words about the Christian 
Graces. He lived them, He was them. 
Yet we do not merely copy Him. 
We learn His art by living with Him, 
like the old apprentices with their 
masters. 

Now we understand it all? Christ’s 
invitation to the weary and _ heavy- 
laden is a call to begin life over again 
upon a new principle — upon His own 
principle. “Watch My way of doing 
enmes.n Mae: i says...) ‘ Follow Me, 
Take life as I take it. Be meek and 
lowly and you will find Rest.” 


114 PAX VOBISCUM. 


I do not say, remember, that the 
Christian life to every man, or to any 
man, can be a bed of roses. No edu- 
cational process can be this. And 
perhaps if some men knew how much 
was involved in the simple “learn” of 
Christ, they would not enter His school 
with so irresponsible a_ heart. For 
there is not only much to learn, but 
much to unlearn. Many men never 
go to this school at all till their dis- 
position is already half ruined and 
character has taken on its fatal set. 
To learn arithmetic is difficult at fifty — 
much more to learn Christianity. To 
learn simply what it is to be meek and 
lowly, in the case of one who has had 


no lessons in that in childhood, may 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. Il5 


cost him half of what he values most 
on earth. Do we realize, for instance, 
that the way of teaching humility is 
generally by humzliation. There is 
_ probably no other school for it. When 
a man enters himself as a pupil in such 
a school it means a very great thing. 
There is such Rest there, but there 
is also much Work. 

I should be wrong, even though my 
theme is the brighter side, to ignore 
the cross and minimize the cost. Only 
it gives to the cross a.more definite 
meaning, and a rarer value, to con- 
nect it thus directly and causally with 
the growth of the inner life. Our 
platitudes on the “benefits of afflic- 


tion” are usually about as vague as- 


116 PAX VOBISCUM. 


our theories of Christian Experience. 


’ 


‘‘Somehow,” we believe affliction does 
us good. But it is not a question of 
“Somehow.” The result is definite, 
calculable, necessary. It is under the 

strictest law of cause and effect. The ‘ 
first effect of losing one’s fortune, for 
instance, is humiliation; and the effect: 
of humiliation, as we have just seen, 
is to make one humble; and the effect 
of being humble is to produce Rest. 
It is a roundabout way, apparently, of 
producing Rest; but Nature generally 
works by circular processes; and it is 
not certain that there is any other way 
of becoming humble, or of finding 
Rest. If a man could make himself 


humble to order, it might simplify 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 117 


matters, but we do not find that this 
happens. Hence we must all go 
through the mill. Hence death, death 
to the lower self, is the nearest gate 
and the quickest road to life. 

Yet this is only half the truth. 
Christ’s life outwardly was one of the 
most troubled lives that was ever lived: 
Tempest and tumult, tumult and tem- 
pest, the waves breaking over it all the 
time till the worn body was laid in the 
grave. But the inner life was a sea 
of glass. The great calm was always 
there. At any moment you might 
have gone to Him and found Rest. 
And even when the blood-hounds were 
dogging Him in the streets of Jeru- 


salem, He turned to His disciples and 


118 PAX VOBISCUM. 


offered them as a last legacy, “My 
peace.” Nothing ever for a moment 
broke the serenity of Christ’s life on 
earth. Misfortune could not reach 
Him; He had no fortune. Food, rai- 
ment, money —fountain-heads of half 
the world’s weariness — He simply did 
not care for; they played no part in 
His life; He “took no thought’ for 
them. It was impossible to affect Him 
by lowering His reputation. He had 
already made himself of no reputation. 
He was dumb before insult. When He 
was reviled He reviled not again. In 
fact, there was nothing that the world 
could do to Him that could ruffle the 
surface of His spirit. 


Such living, as merely living, is al- 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. Ilo 


together unique. It is only when we 
see what it was in Him that we can 
know what the word Rest means. It 
lies not in emotions, nor in the absence 
of emotions. It is not a hallowed feel- 
ing that comes over us in church. It 
is not something that the preacher has 
in his voice. It is not in nature, or in 
poetry, or in music — though in all 
these there is soothing. It is the mind 
at leisure from itself. It is the perfect 
poise of the soul; the absolute adjust- 
ment of the inward man to the stress 
of all outward things; the prepared- 
ness against every emergency; the 
stability of assured convictions; the 
eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; 


the repose of a heart set deep in God. 


120 PAX VOBISCUM. 


It is the mood of the man who says, 
with Browning, “‘ God’s in His Heaven, 
all’s well with the world.” 

Two painters each painted a picture 
to illustrate his conception of rest. 
The first chose for his scene a still, 
lone lake among the far-off moun- 
tains. The second threw on his can- 
vas a thundering water-fall, with a 
fragile birch tree bending over the 
foam; at the fork of a branch, almost 
wet with the cataract’s spray, a robin 
sat on its nest. The first was only 
Stagnation; the last was Rest. For in 
Rest there are always two elements — 
tranquility and energy; silence and 
turbulence; creation and destruction; 
fearlessness and fearfulness. This it 


was in Christ. 


EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. I2I1 


It is quite plain from all this that 
‘whatever else He claimed to be or to 
do, He at least knew how to live. All 
this is the perfection of living, of liv- 
Ing in the mere sense of passing 
through the world in the best way. 
Hence His anxiety to communicate 
His idea of life to others. He came, 
He said, to give men life, true life, a 
more abundant life than they were 
living; ‘the life,” as the fine phrase 
in the Revised Version has it, ‘‘ that is 
life indeed.” This is what He him- 
self possessed, and it was this which 
He offers to all mankind. And hence 
His direct appeal for all to come to - 
Him who had not made much of life, 


who were weary and heavy laden. 


122 PAX VOBISCUM. 


These He would teach His secret. 
They, also, should know “the life that 


is life indeed.” 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 123 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 


HERE is still one doubt to clear 
up. After the statement, “ Learn 

of Me,” Christ throws im the discon- 
certing qualification, ‘‘ Zake My Yoke 
upon you and learn of Me.” Why, if 
all this be true, does He call it a yoke ? 
Why, while professing to give Rest, 
does He with the next breath whisper 
““ burden’ ?. Is the Christian life, after 
all, what its enemies take it for—an 
additional weight to the already great 
woe of life, some extra punctiliousness 


about duty, some painful devotion to ob» 


124 PAX VOBISCUM. 


servances, some heavy restriction and 
trammelling of all that is joyous and 
free in the world? Is life not hard and 
sorrowful enough without being fet- 
tered with yet another yoke? 

It is astounding how so glaring a 
misunderstanding of this plain sentence 
should ever have passed into currency. 
Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke 
is really for? Is it to be a burden to 
the animal which wears it? It is just 
the opposite. It is to make its burden 
light. Attached to the oxen in any 
other way than by a yoke, the plough 
would be intolerable. Worked by 
means of a yoke, it is light. A yoke 
is not an instrument of torture; it is 


an instrument. of mercy. It is not a 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 125 


malicious contrivance for making work 
hard; it is a gentle device to’ make 
hard labor light. It is not meant to 
give pain, but to save pain. And yet 
men speak of the yoke of Christ as if 
it were a slavery, and look upon those 
who wear it as objects of compassion. 
For generations we have had homi- 
lies on “The Yoke of Christ,” some 
delighting in portraying its narrow 
exactions; some seeking in these exac- 
tions the marks of its divinity; others © 
apologizing for it, and toning it down; 
still others assuring us that, although 
it be very bad, it is not to be compared 
with the positive blessings of Chris- 
tianity. How many, especially among 


the young, has this one mistaken 


126 PAX VOBISCUM. 


phrase driven forever away from the 
kingdom of God? Instead of making 
Christ attractive, it makes Him out 
a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty 
restrictions, calling. for _ self-denial 
where none is necessary, making mis- 
ery a virtue under the plea that it is 
the yoke of Christ, and happiness 
criminal because it now and _ then 
evades it. According to this concep- 
tion, Christians are at best the victims 
of a depressing fate; their life is a 
penance; and their hope for the next 
world purchased by a slow martyrdom 
in this. 

The mistake has arisen from taking 


oP 


the word “yoke” here in the same 


sense, as in the expressions “under 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 127 


the yoke,” or “wear the yoke in his 
youth.” But in Christ’s illustration 
it is not the jugum of the Roman 
soldier, but the simple “harness” 


, 


or “ ox-collar”’ of the Eastern peasant. 
It is the literal wooden yoke which He, 
with His own hands in the carpenter 
shop, had probably often made. He 
knew the difference between a smooth 
yoke and a rough one, a bad fit and a 
good fit; the difference also it made to 
the patient animal which had to wear 
it. The rough yoke galled, and the 
burden was heavy; the smooth yoke 
caused no pain, and the burden was 
lightly drawn. The badly-fitted har- 
ness was a misery ; the well-fitted col- 


lar was “ easy.” 


128 PAX VOBISCUM. 


And what was the “burden”? It 
was not some special burden laid upon 
the Christian, some unique infliction 
that they alone must bear. It was. 
what all men bear. It was simply 
life, human life itself, the general bur- 
den of life which all must carry with 
them from the cradle to the grave. 
Christ saw that men took life painfully. 
To some it was a weariness to others. 
a failure, to many a tragedy, to all a 
struggle and a pain. How to carry 
this burden of life had been the whole 
world’s problem. It is still the whole 
world’s problem. And here is Christ’s 
solution: ‘Carry it as I do. Take 
life as I take it. Look at it from My 


point of view. Interpret it upon My. 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 129 


principles. Take My yoke and learn 
of Me, and you will find it easy. For 
My yoke is easy, works easily, sits 
right upon the shoulders, and ¢herefore 
My burden is light.” 

There is no suggestion here that 
religion will absolve any man from 
bearing burdens. That would be to 
absolve him from living, since it is 
life itself that is the burden. What 
Christianity does propose is to make it 
tolerable. Christ’s yoke is simply His 
secret for the alleviation of human life, 
His prescription for the best and hap- 
piest method of living. Men harness 
themselves to the work and stress of 
the world in clumsy and unnatural 


ways. The harness they put on is 


130 PAX VOBISCUM. 


antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar 
at the best, they make its strain and 
friction past enduring, by placing it 
where the neck is most sensitive; and 
by mere continuous irritation this. sen- 
sitiveness increases until the whole 
nature is quick and sore. 

This is the origin, among other. 
things, of a disease called “ touchi- 
ness ’’—a disease which, in spite of its 
innocent name, is one of the gravest 
sources of restlessness in the world. 
Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, 
is a morbid condition of the inward 
disposition. It is self-love inflamed to 
the acute point; conceit, wth a hatr- 
trigger. The cure is to shift the yoke 


to some other place ; to let men and 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. I31r 


things touch us through some new and 
perhaps as yet unused part of our 
nature ; to become meek and lowly in 
heart while the old nature is becoming 
numb from want of use. Itis the beau- 
tiful work of Christianity everywhere to 
adjust the burden of life to those who 
bear it, and them to it. It has a per- 
fectly miraculous gift of healing. With- 
out doing any violence to human nature 
- it sets it right with life, harmonizing it 
with all surroun din things, and restor- 
ing those who are jaded with the fatigue 
and dust of the world to a new grace 
of iiving. Inthe mere matter of alter- 
ing the perspective of life and changing 
the proportion of things, its functions in 


lightening the care of man is altogether 


132 PAX VOBISCUM. 


its own. The weight of a load depends 

upon the attraction of the earth. But. 
suppose the attraction of the earth were 
removed? A ton on some other planet, 
where the attraction of gravity is less,. 
does not weigh half a ton. Now Chris- 
tianity removes the attraction of the. 
earth, and this is one way in which 
it diminishes men’s burden. It makes. 
them citizens of another world. What 
was a ton yesterday is not half a ton 
to-day. . So without changing one’s cir- 
cumstances, merely by offering a wider 
horizon and a different standard, it alters. 
the whole aspect of the world. 

| Christianity as Christ taught is the 
truest philosophy of life ever spoken. 


But let us be quite sure when we speak 


WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 133 


of Christianity that we mean Christ’s. 
Christianity. Other versions are either 
caricatures, or exaggerations, or mis- 
understandings, or shortsighted and 
surface readings. For the most part 
their attainment is hopeless and the 
results wretched. But I care not who 
the person is, or through what vale of 
tears he has passed, or is about to pass, 
there is a new life for him along this 


path. 


134 PAX VOBISCUM. 


HOW FRUITS GROW. 


| ERE Rest my subject, there are 

other things I should wish to 
say about it, and other kinds of Rest 
of which I should like to speak. But 
that is not my subject. My theme is 
that the Christian experiences are not 
the work of magic, but come under 
the law of Cause and Effect. And I 
have chosen Rest only as a single 
illustration of the working of that 
principle. If there were time I might 
next run over aH the Christian experi- 


ences in turn, and show how the same 


HOW FRUITS GROW. 135 


wide law applies to each. But I think 
it may serve the better purpose if 
I leave this further exercise to your- 
selves. I know no Bible study that 
you will find more full of fruit, or 
which will take you nearer to the ways 
of God, or make the Christian life 
itself more solid or more sure. I shall 
add only a single other illustration of 
what I mean, before I close. 

Where does Joy come from? I 
knew a Sunday scholar whose con- 
ception of Joy was that it was a thing 
made in lumps and kept somewhere in 
Heaven, and that when people prayed 
for it, pieces were somehow let down 
and fitted into their souls. I am not 


sure that views as gross and material 


136 PAX VOBISCUM. 


are not often held by people who ought 
to be wiser. In reality, Joy is as 
much a matter of Cause and Effect as 
pain. No one can get Joy by merely 
asking for it. It is one of the ripest 
fruits of the Christian life, and, like 
all fruits, must be grown. There is a 
very clever trick in India called the 
mango-trick. A seed is put in the 
ground and covered up, and after 
divers incantations a full-blown mango 
‘ bush. appears within five minutes. I 
never met any one who knew how 
the thing was done, but I never met 
any one who believed it to be any- 
thing else than a conjuring-trick. The 
world is pretty unanimous now in its 


belief in the orderliness of Nature. 


HOW FRUITS GROW. 137 


Men may not know how fruits grow, 
but they do know that they cannot 
grow «in five minutes. Some lives 
have not even a stalk on which fruits 
could hang, even if they did grow in 
five minutes. Some have never planted. 
one sound seed of Joy in all their lives: 
and others who may have planted a 
germ or two have lived so little in 
sunshine that they never could come 
to maturity. 

Whence, then, is joy? Christ put 
His teaching upon this subject into one 
of the most exquisite of His parables. 
I should in any instance have appealed 
to His teaching here, as in the case of 
Rest for I do not wish you to think I 


am speaking words of my own. But 


138 PAX VOBISCUM. 


it so happens that He has dealt with it 
in words of unusual fulness. | 

I need not recall the whole illustra- 
tion. It is the parable of the’Vine. 
Did you ever think why Christ spoke 
that parable? He did not merely 
throw it into space as a fine illustration 
of general. truths. It was not simply a 
statement of the mystical union, and 
the doctrine of an indwelling Christ. 
It was that; but it was more. After 
He had said it, He did what was not 
an unusual thing when He was teaching 
His greatest lessons. He turned to 
the disciples and said He would tell 
them why He had spoken it. It was 
to tell them how to get joy. “These 


things have I spoken unto you,” He 


HOW FRUITS GROW. 139 


said, “that My joy might remain in 
you and that your Joy might be full.” 
It was a purposed and deliberate com- 
munication of His secret of Happiness. 

Go back over these verses, then, and 
you will find the Causes of this Effect, 
the spring, and the only spring, out of 
which true Happiness comes. I am not 
going to analyze them in detail. I ask 
you to enter into the words for your- 
selves. Remember, in the first place, 
that the Vine was the Eastern symbol 
of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad 
the heart of man. Yet, however inno- 
cent that gladness—for the expressed 
juice of the grape was the common 
drink at every peasant’s board — the 


gladness was only a gross and passing 


140 PAX VOBISCUM. 


thing. This was not true happiness, 
and the vine of the Palestine vineyards 
was not the true vine. Christ was “the 
true Vine.” Here, then, is the ulti: 
mate source of Joy. “Through whatever 
media it reaches us, all true joy and 
~ Gladness find their source in Christ. 
By this, of course, is not meant that the 
actual Joy experienced is transferred 
from Christ’s nature, or is something 
passed on from Him to us. What is 
passed on is His method of getting 
it. There is, indeed, a sense in which 
we can share another’s joy or an- 
other’s sorrow. But that is another 
matter. Christ is the source of Joy 
to men in the sense in which He is 


the source of Rest. His people share 


HOW FRUITS GROW. > I4t 


His life, and therefore share its con: 
sequences, and one of these is Joy. 
His method of living is one that in the 
nature of things produces Joy. When 
He spoke of His Joy remaining with 
us, He meant in part that the causes 
which produced it should continue to 
act. His followers, that is to say, 
by repeating His life would experi- 
ence its accompaniments. His Joy, 
His kind of Joy, would remain with 
them. 

The medium through which this Joy 
comes is next explained: “He that 
abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth | 
much fruit.” Fruit first, Joy next; the 
one the cause or medium of the other. 


Fruit-bearing is the necessary antece- 


142 PAX VOBISCUM. 


dent; Joy both the necessary conse- 
quent and the necessary accompani- 
ment. It lay partly in the bearing 
fruit, partly in the fellowship which 
made that possible. Partly, that is to 
say, Joy lay in mere constant living in 
Christ’s presence, with all that that 
implied of peace, of shelter and of 
love; partly in the influence of that 
Life upon mind and character and 
will; and partly in the inspiration to 
live and work for others, with all that 
that brings of self-riddance and Joy 
in others’ gain. All these, in different 
ways and at different times, are sources 
of pure Happiness. Even the sim- 
plest of them—to do good to other 


people —is an instant and _infalli- 


HOW FRUITS GROW. 143 


ble specific. There is no mystery 
about Happiness whatever. Put in the 
right ingredients and it must come out. 
He that abideth in Him will bring 
forth much fruit; and bringing forth 
much fruit is Happiness. The infalli- 
ble receipt for Happiness, then, is to 
do good; and the infallible receipt for 
doing good is to abide in Christ. The 
-surest proof that all this is a plain 
matter of Cause and Effect is that men 
may try every other conceivable way 
of finding Happiness, and they will 
‘fail. Only the right cause in each 
case can produce the right effect. 
Then the Christian experiences are 
our own making? In the same sense 


in which grapes are our own making, 


144 PAX VOBISCUM. 


and no more. All fruits grow — 
whether they grow in the soil or in’ 
the soul; whether they are the fruits 
of the wild grape or of the True Vine. 
No man can make things grow. He 
can get them to grow by arranging all 
the circumstances and fulfilling all the 
conditions. But the growing is done 
by God. Causes and effects are eternal 
arrangements, set in the constitution of | 
‘the world ; fixed beyond man’s order-, 
ing. What man can do is to place 


himself in the midst of a chain of 


sequences. Thus he can get things to . 


grow: thus he himself can grow. But 

the grower is the Spirit of God. 
What more need I add but this — 

test the method by experiment. Do 


HOW FRUITS GROW. | 145 


not imagine that you have got these 
things because you know how to get 
them. As) well try to feed upon a 
cookery book. But I think I can 
promise that if you try in this simple 
and natural way, you will not fail. 
Spend the time you have spent in 
sighing for fruits in fulfilling the con- 
ditions of their growth. The fruits 
will come, must come. We have hith- 
erto paid immense attention to effects, 
to the mere experiences themselves ; 
we have described them, extolled them, 
advised them, prayed for them — done 
everything but find out what caused 
them. Henceforth let us deal with 
causes. “To be,” says Lotze, “1s to 


be in relations.” About every other 


146 PAX VOBISCUM. 


method of living the Christian life 
there is an uncertainty. About every 
other method of acquiring the Chris- 
tian experiences there is a “ perhaps.” 
But in so far as this method is the 
way of nature, it cannot fail. Its 
guarantee is the laws of the universe, 
and these are “the Hands of the Liv- 
ing God.” 


THE TRUE VINE. 147 


THE TRUE VINE. 

“7 AM the true vine, and my Father 

is the husbandman. Every branch 
in me that beareth not fruit he taketh 
away: and every branch that beareth 
fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring 
forth more fruit. Now ye are clean 
through the word which I have spoken 
unto you. Abide in me, and I in 
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit 
of itself, except it abide in the vine; 
no more-can ye, except ye abide in 
mererals ame theivine, (ye. are the 
branches: he that abideth in me, and 
I in him, the same bringeth forth much 


148 PAX VOBISCUM. 


fruit: for without me ye can do noth. 
ing. If a man abide not in me, he is 
cast forth as a branch, and is withered; 
and men gather them, and cast them | 
into the fire, and they are burned. If 
ye abide in me, and my word abide in 
you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it 
shall be done unto you. Herein is 
_my Father glorified, that ye may bear 


‘much fruit ; so ye shall be my disciples. 


As the Father hath loved me, so _ 


have I loved you: continue ye in my 
love. If ye keep my commandments, 
ye shall abide in my love; even as I 
have kept my Father’s commandments, 
and abide in his love. These things 
have I spoken unto you, that my joy 
might remain in you, and that your 


joy might be full.” 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 





PREFACE. 


AST autumn, in a book-shop in 
California, the author found a 

little book with his name upon the title- 
page —a book which he did not know 
existed; which he never wrote; nor 
baptized with the title which it bore. 
This stray publication— taken from 
shorthand notes of a spoken Address — 
he does not grudge. Already, it seems, 
it has done its small measure of good. 
But owing to the imperfections which 
it contains it has been thought right to 


issue a more complete edition. 


151 


152 - PREFACE. 


The theme, like its predecessors in 
this series, represents but a single 
aspect of its great subject—the man-. 
ward side. The light and shade is 
apportioned with this in view. And 
the reader’s kind attention is asked to 
this limitation, lest he wonder at points 
being left in shadow which theology 
has always, and rightly, taught us to 
emphasize. 

It was the hearing of a simple talk 
by a friend to some plain people in a 
Highland deer-forest which first called 
the author’s attention to the practical- 
ness of this solution of the cardinal 
problem of Christian experience. What 
follows owes a large debt to that Sunday 


morning. 


We all : 
With unveiled face 
Reflecting 
As a Mirror 
The Glory of the Lord 
Are transformed 
Into the same image 
From Glory to Glory 
Even as from the Lord 
The Spirit. 


153 





THE CHANGED LIFE. | 


““T PROTEST that if some great power would 
agree to make me always think what is true 
and do what is right, on condition of being 
turned into a sort of clock and wound up every 
morning, I should instantly close with the 
offer.” 3 


HESE are the words of Mr. Hux- 
ley. The infinite desirability, the 
infinite difficulty of being good — the 
theme is as old as humanity. The 
man does not live from whose deeper 
being the same confession has not 
risen, or who would not give his all 
| : 155 


156 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


to-morrow, if he could ‘‘close with the 
offer,” of becoming a better man. 

I propose to make that offer now. 
In all seriousness, without being 
“turned into a sort of clock,’ the end 
can be attained. Under the right con- 
ditions it is as natural for character to 
become beautiful as for a flower; and 
if on God’s earth there is not some 
machinery for effecting it, the supreme 
-gift to the world has been forgotten. 
This is simply what man was made 
for. With Browning: “I say that 
Man was made to grow, not stop.” 
Or in the deeper words of an older 
Book: “Whom He did foreknow, He 
also did predestinate . .. to be con- 


formed to the. Image of His Son.” 


THE CHANGED LIFE. vt 57 


Let me begin by naming, and in 
part discarding, some processes in 
vogue already, for producing better 
lives. These processes are far from 
wrong; in their place they may even 
be essential. One ventures to dispar- 
age them only because they do not 
turn out the most perfect possible 
work. 

‘The first imperfect method is to rely 
on Resolution. In will-power, in mere 
spasms of earnestness there is no sal-_ 
vation. Struggle, effort, even agony, 
have their place in Christianity, as we 
shall see; but this is not where they 
come in. In mid-Atlantic the other 
day, the Etruria, in which I was sail- 


ing, suddenly stopped. Something 


158 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


had gone wrong with the engines. 
There were five hundred able-bodied 
men on board the ship. Do you think 
that if we had gathered together and 
pushed against the mast we could have 
pushed it on? When one attempts to | 
sanctify himself by effort, he is trying 
to make his boat go by pushing against 
the mast. He is like a drowning man 
trying to lift himself out of the water 
by pulling at the hair of his own head. 
Christ held up this method almost to 
ridicule when he said, “ Which of you 
by taking thought can add a cubit to 
his stature?” The one redeeming fea- 
ture of the self-sufficient method is this 
— that those who try it find out almost 


at once that it will not gain the goal. 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 159 


Another experimenter says: “ But 
that is not my method. I have seen 
the folly of a mere wild struggle in 
the dark. I work ona principle. My 
plan is not to waste power on random 
effort, but to concentrate on a single 
sin. By taking one at a time, and 
crucifying it steadily, I hope in the 
end to extirpate all.” To this, unfor- 
tunately, there are four objections: 
For one thing, life is too short; the 
name of sin is Legion. For another 
thing, to deal with individual sins is to 
leave the rest of the nature for the time 
untouched. In the third place a single 
_ combat with a special sin does not affect 
the root and spring of the disease. If 


only one of the channels of sin be ob- 


160 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


structed, experience points to an almost 
certain overflow through some other 
part of the nature. Partial conversion 
is almost always accompanied by such 
moral leakage, for the pent-up energies 
accumulate to the bursting point, and 
the last state of that soul may be worse 
than the first. In the last place, reli- 
gion does not consist in negatives, in 
stopping this sin and. stopping that. 
The perfect character can never be 
_ produced with a pruning knife. 

- But a third protests: “So be it. I 
make no attempt to stop sins one by 
one. My method is just the opposite. 
I copy the virtues one by one.” The 
difficulty about the copying method is 
that it is apt to be mechanical. One 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 16E 


can always tell an engraving from a 
picture, an artificial flower from a real 
flower. To copy virtues one by one 
has somewhat the same effect as erad- 
icating the vices one by one; the 
temporary result is an overbalanced 
and incongruous character. Some one 
defines a prig as “a creature that is 
over-fed for its size.” One sometimes 
finds Christians of this species — over- 
fed on one side of their nature, but 
dismally thin. and -starved-looking on 
the other. The result for instance, of 
copying Humility, and adding it on to 
an otherwise worldly life, is simply gro- 
tesque. A rabid temperance advocate, 
for the same reason, is often the poor- 


est of creatures, flourishing on a single 


162 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


virtue, and quite oblivious that his Tem- 
perance is making a worse man of. 
him and not a better. These are 
examples of fine virtues spoiled by 
association with mean companions. 
Character is a unity, and all the virtues 
must advance together to make the 
perfect man. This method of sanctifi- 
cation, nevertheless, is in the true 
direction. It is only in the details of 
execution that it fails. 

A fourth method I need scarcely 
mention, for it is a variation on those 
already named. It is the very young 
man’s method; and the pure earnest- 
ness of it makes it almost desecration 
to touch it. It is to keep a private 


note-book with columns for the days 


THE CHANGED LIFE. 163 


of the week, and a list of virtues with 
spaces against each for marks. This, 
with many stern rules for preface, is 
stored away in a secret place, and 
from time to time, at nightfall, the 
soul is arraigned before it as_ before 
a private judgment bar. This living 
by code was Franklin’s method; and 
I suppose thousands more could tell 
how they had hung up in their bed- 
rooms, or hid in lock-fast drawers, the 
rules which one solemn day they drew 
up to shape their lives. This method 
is not erroneous, only somehow its 
success is poor. You bear me wit- 
“ness that it fails. And it fails gener- 
ally for very matter-of-fact reasons — 
most likely because one day we forget 


the rules. 


164 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


All these methods that have been 
named — the self-sufficient method, the 
self-crucifixion method, the mimetic 
method, and the diary method — are 
perfectly human, perfectly natural, per- 
fectly ignorant, and, as they stand, per- 
fectly inadequate. It is not argued, I 
repeat, that they must be abandoned. 
Their harm is rather that they distract 
attention from the true working method, 
and secure a fair result at the expense 
of the perfect one. What that perfect, 


method is we shall now go on to ask. ~ 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 16 5 


THE FORMULA OF SANCTI- 
FICATION. 


FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanc- 
tification — can one _ seriously 
“speak of this mighty change as if the 
process were as definite as for the pro- 
duction of so many volts of electricity ? 
It is impossible to doubt it. Shall a 
mechanical experiment succeed infalli- 
Dbily, and the one vital experiment of 
‘humanity remain a chance? Is corn 
to grow by method, and character by 
caprice? If we cannot calculate to a 


certainty that the forces of religion 


166 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


will do their work, then is religion 
vain. And if we cannot express the 
law of these forces in simple words, 
then is Christianity not the world’s 
religion, but the world’s conundrum. 
Where, then, shall one look for such 
a formula? Where one would look for 
any formula— among the text-books. 
And if we turn to the text-books of 
Christianity we shall find a formula for 
this problem as clear and precise as 
any in the mechanical sciences. If 
this simple rule, moreover, be but fol- 
lowed fearlessly, it will yield the result - 
of a perfect character as surely as any 
result that is guaranteed by the laws of 
nature. The finest expression of this 


rule in Scripture, or indeed in any lit- 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 167 


erature, is probably one drawn up and 
condensed into a single verse by Paul. 
You will find it in a letter— the second 
to the Corinthians — written by him to 
some Christian people who, in a city 
which was a byword for depravity and 
licentiousness, were seeking the higher 
life. To see the point of the words we 
must take them from the immensely 
improved rendering of the Revised 
translation, for the older Version in 
this case greatly obscures the sense. 
They are these: :.* We. all, with un- 
veiled face reflecting as a mirror the 
glory of the Lord, are transformed 
into the same image from glory to 
glory, even as from the Lord the 


Spirit.” 


168 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


Now observe at the outset the entire 
contradiction of all our previous efforts, 
in the simple passive “we ave trans- 
formed.” We are changed, as the 
Old Version has it— we do not change 
ourselves. No man can change him- 
self. Throughout the New Testament 
you will find that wherever these 
moral and spiritual transformations are 
described the verbs are in the passive. 
Presently it will be pointed out that 
there is a vationale in this; but mean- 
time do not toss these words aside as 
if this passivity denied all human effort 
or ignored intelligible law. What is 
implied for the soul here is no more 
than is everywhere claimed for the 


body. In physiology the verbs de- 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 169 


scribing the processes of growth are 


in the passive. Growth is not volun- 


tary; it takes place, it happens, it is 


wrought upon matter. So here. “Ye 
must be born again” — we cannot born 
‘ourselves. ‘‘ Be not conformed to this 
world, but de ye transformed’ — we are 
subjects to transforming influence, we 
do not transform ourselves. Not more 
certain is it that it is something outside 
the thermometer that produces a change 
in the thermometer, than it is some- 
thing outside the soul of man that 
produces a moral change upon him, 
That he must be susceptible to that 
change, that he must be a party to it, 
goes without saying; but that neither 
his aptitude nor his will can produce 


it, is equally certain. 


9 


170 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


Obvious as it ought to seem, this 
may be to some an: almost startling 
revelation. The change we have been 
striving after is not to be produced by 
any more striving after. It is to be 
wrought upon us by the moulding of 
hands beyond our own. As the branch 
-ascends,:and the bud bursts, and the 
fruit reddens under the co-operation of 
influences from the outside air, so man 
rises to the higher stature under invisi- 
ble pressures from without. The radi- 
cal defect of all our former methods 
of sanctification was the attempt to 
generate from within that which can 
only be wrought upon us from without. 
According to the first Law of Motion: 


Every body continues in its state of 


- 
FORMULA OF. SANCTIFICATION. 171 


rest, or of uniform ‘motion in a straight 
line, except in so far as it may be com- 
pelled dy impressed forces to change — 
that state. This is also a first law of 
Christianity. Every man’s character 
remains as it is, or continues in the di- 
rection in which it is going, until it is 
compelled dy impressed forces to change 
that state. Our failure has been the 
failure to put ourselves in the way of 
the impressed forces. There is a clay, 
and there is a Potter; we have tried to 
get the clay to mould the clay. 

Whence, then, these pressures, and 
where this Potter? The answer of the 
formula is “By reflecting as a mirror 
the glory of the Lord we are changed.” 


But this is not very clear. What is 


172 THE CHANGED LIFE. . 


the “glory” of the Lord, and how can 
mortal man reflect it, and how can that 
act as an “impressed force” in mould- 
ing him to a nobler form? The word 
“glory ’’—the word which has to bear 
the weight of holding those “impressed 
forces’? — is a stranger in current 
speech, and our first duty is to seek 
out its equivalent in working English. 
It suggests at first a radiance of some 
kind, something dazzling or glittering, 
some halo such as the old masters 
loved to paint round the heads of their 
Ecce Homos. But that is paint, mere 
matter, the visible symbol of some 
unseen thing. What is that unseen 
thing? It is that of all unseen things 


the most radiant, the most beautiful, 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 173 


the most Divine, and that is Character. 
On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing 
so great, so glorious as this. The 
word has many meanings; in ethics it 
can have but one. Glory is character, 
and nothing less, and it can be nothing 
more. The earth is “full of the glory 
of the Lord,” because it is: full of His 
character. The “‘ Beauty of the Lord” 
is character. ‘‘The effulgence of His 
Glory” is character. “The Glory of 
the Only Begotten” is character, the 
character which is “fulness of grace 
and truth.” And when God told His 
people Avs name He simply gave them > 
His ees His character which 
was Himself: “And the Lord pro- 


claimed the name of the Lord .. . 


174 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and 
gracious, long-suffering and. abundant 
in goodness and truth.” Glory then is 
Bat something intangible, or ghostly, 
or transcendental... If it were this. 
how could Paul ask men to reflect it? 
Stripped of its physical enswathement 
it is Beauty, moral and spiritual Beauty, 
Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, 
yet infinitely near and infinitely com- 
municable. | 

With this explanation read over the 
sentence once more in paraphrase: 
We all reflecting as a mirror the char- 
acter of Christ are transformed into the 
same Image from character to charac- 
ter — from a poor character to a better 


, one, from a better one to one a little 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 175 | 


‘better still, from that to one still more 
‘complete, until by slow degrees the 
| Perfect Image is attained. Here the 
Solution of the problem of sanctification 
lis compressed into a sentence: Reflect 
"the character of Christ, and you will 
\become like Christ. 

All men are mirrors—that is the first 
‘law on which this formula is based. 
None of the aptest descriptions of a 
Vedran being is that he is a mirror. 
lAs we sat at table to-night the world 
lin which each of us lived and moved 
[throughout this day was focussed in 
the room. What we saw as we looked 
‘at one another was not one another, 


\but one another’s world. We were 


» 


(an arrangement of mirrors. The 


176 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


scenes we saw were all reproduced; 
the people we met walked to and fro; 
they spoke, they bowed, they passed 
us by, did everything over again as if 
it had been real. When we talked, 


we were but looking at our own mir- 


ror and describing what flitted across — 


it; our listening was not hearing, but 
seeing — we but looked on our neigh- 
bor’s mirror. All human intercourse 
is a seeing of reflections. I meet a 
stranger in a railway carriage. The 
cadence of his first word tells me he 
is English, and comes from Yorkshire. 
Without knowing it he has reflected 
his birthplace, his parents, and the 


long history of their race. Even phys- 


lologically he is a mirror. His second 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 177 


sentence records that he is a politician, 
and a faint inflection in the way he 
pronounces. Zhe Times reveals his 
party. In his next remarks I see re- 
flected a whole world of experiences. 
The books he has read, the people 
he has met, the influences that have 
played upon him and made him the 
man he is—these are all registered 
there by a pen which lets nothing 
pass, and whose writing can never be 
blotted out. What I am reading in 
him meantime he also is reading in 
me; and before the journey is over 
we could half write each other’s lives. 
Whether we like it or not, we live in 
glass houses. The mind, the memory, 


the soul, is simply a vast chamber 


178 * THE CHANGED LIFE. 


panelled with looking-glass. And upon 
this miraculous arrangement and en- 
dowment depends the capacity of mor- 
tal souls to “reflect the character of 
the Lord.” 

But this is not all. If all these 
varied reflections from our so-called 
secret life are patent to the world, how 
close the writing, how complete the 
record, within the soul itself! For the 
influences we meet are not simply held 
for a moment on the polished surface 
and thrown off again into space. Each 
i retained where first it fell, and stored 
up in the soul forever. 

This law of Assimilation is the sec- 
ond, and by far the most impressive 


truth which underlies the formula of 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. ‘179 


sanctification —the truth that men are 
not only mirrors, but that these mirrors, 
so far from being mere reflectors of the 
fleeting things they see, transfer into 
their own inmost substance, and hold 
in permanent preservation, the things 
that they reflect. No one knows how 
the soul can hold these things. No 
one knows how the miracle is done. 
No phenomenon in nature, no process 
in chemistry, no chapter in necro- 
mancy can ever help us to begin to- 
understand this amazing operation. 
For, think of it, the past is not only 
focussed there, in a man’s soul, it is 
there. How could it be reflected from 
there if it were not there? All things 


that he has ever seen, known, felt, 


180 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


believed of the surrounding world are 
now within him, have become. part of 
him, in part are him—he has been 
changed into their image. He may 
deny it, he may resent it, but they are 
there. They do not adhere to him, 
they are transfused through him. He 
cannot alter or rub them out. They 
are not in his memory, they are in 
him. His soul is as they have filled it, 
made aty left it.) These: things) taese 
books, these events, these influences 
are his makers. In their hands are 
life and death, beauty and deformity. 
When once the image or likeness of 
any of these is fairly presented to the 
soul, no power on earth can hinder 


two things happening —it must be 


FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. I8I 


absorbed into the soul, and forever 
reflected back again from character. 
Upon these astounding yet perfectly 
obvious psychological facts, Paul bases 
his doctrine of sanctification. He 
sees that character is a thing built 
up by slow degrees, that it is hourly 
changing for better or for - worse 
according to the images which flit 
across it. One step further and the 
whole length and breadth of the appli- 
cation of these ideas to the central 
problem of religion will stand before 


US. 


182 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLU- 
ENCE. 


F events change men, much more 
persons. No man can meet an- 
other on the street without making 
some mark upon him. We say we 
exchange words when we meet; what 
we exchange is souls. And when inter- 
course is very close and very frequent, 
so complete is this exchange that rec- 
ognizable bits of the one soul begin 
to show in the other’s nature, and the 
second is conscious of a similar and 


growing debt to the first, 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 183 


This mysterious approximating of 
two souls who has not witnessed? 
Who has not watched some old couple 
come down life’s pilgrimage hand in 
hand, with such gentle trust and joy in 
one another that their very faces wore 
the self-same look? These were not 
two souls; it was a composite soul. 
It did not matter to which of the 
two you spoke you would have said 
the same words to either. It was 
quite indifferent which replied, each 
would have said the same. Half a 
century’s reflecting had told upon 
them; they were changed into the 
same image. It is the Law of In- 
fluence that we become like those whom 


we habitually admire: these had be- 


> 


184 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


come like because they habitually 
admired. Through all the range of 
literature, of history, and biography 
this law presides. Men are all mosaics 
of other men. There was a savor of 
David about Jonathan and a savor of 
Jonathan about David. Jean Valjean, 
in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is 
Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. 
Metempsychosis is a fact. George 
Eliot’s message to the world was that 
men and women make men and wo- 
men. The Family, the cradle of 
mankind, has no meaning apart from. 
this. Society itself is nothing but a 
rallying point for these omnipotent 
forces to do their work. On the doc- 
trine of Influence, in short, the whole — 


vast pyramid of humanity is built. 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 185 


But it was reserved for Paul to make 
the supreme application of the Law of 
Influence. It was a tremendous infer- 
ence to make, but he never hesitated. 
He himself was a changed man; he 
knew exactly what had done it; it was 
Christ. On the Damascus road they 
met; and from that hour his life was 
absorbed in His. The effect could not 
but follow—on words, on deeds, on 
career, on creed, | The ‘impressed 
forces’”’ did their vital work. He be- 
came like Him Whom he habitually 
loved. ‘‘So we all,” he writes, ‘re- 
flecting as a mirror the glory of Christ, 
are changed into the same image.” 

Nothing could be more simple, more 


intelligible, more natural, more super- 


186 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


natural. It is an analogy from an 
every-day fact. Since we are what 
we are by the impacts of those who 
surround us, those who _— surround 
themselves with the highest will be 
those who change into the highest. 
There are some men and some women 
in whose company we are always at 
our best. While with them we cannot 
think mean thoughts or speak ungen- 
erous words. Their mere presence 
is elevation, purification, sanctity. All 
the best stops in our nature are drawn 
out by their intercourse, and we find a 
music in our souls that was never there 
before. Suppose even Zatz influence pro- 
longed through a month, a year, a life- 


time, and what could not life become? 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 187 © 


Here, even on the common plane of 
life, talking our language, walking 
our streets, working side by side, are 
sanctifiers of souls; here, breathing 
through common clay, is Heaven; 
here, energies charged even through a 
temporal medium with the virtue of 
regeneration. If to live with men, 
diluted to the millionth degree with 
the virtue of the Highest, can exalt and 
purify the nature, what bounds can 
be?set tom, the influence’ of. Christ? 
To live with Socrates— with unveiled 
face — must have made one wise; with 
Aristides, just. Francis of Assisi must 
have made one gentle; Savonarola, 
strong. But to have lived with Christ 
must have made one like Christ; that 


is to say, A Christian. 


188 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


As a matter of fact, to live with 
Christ did produce this effect. It pro- 
duced it in the case of Paul. And 
during Christ’s lifetime the experiment 
was tried in an even more startling 
form. <A few raw, unspiritual, unin- 
spiring men, were admitted to the inner 
circle of His friendship. The change 
began at once. Day by day we can 
almost see the first disciple grow. 
First there steals over them the faintest 
possible adumbration of His character, 
and occasionally, very occasionally, 
they do a thing or say a thing that they 

could not have done or said had they 
“not been living there. Slowly the 
spell of His Life deepens. Reach 


after reach of their nature is overtaken, 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 189 


thawed, subjugated, sanctified.. Their 
manner softens, their words become 
more gentle, their conduct more un- 
selfish. As swallows who have found 
a summer, as frozen buds the spring, 
their starved humanity bursts into a 
fuller life. They do not know how it 
is, but they are different men. One 
day they find themselves like their 
Master, going about and doing good. 
To themselves it is unaccountable, 
but they cannot do otherwise. They 
were not told to do it, it came to them 
to do it. But the people who watch 
them know well how to account for it 
— ‘They have been,’ they whisper, 
“with Jesus.” Already even, the 


mark and seal of His character is upon 


190 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


them — “They have been with Jesus.” 
Unparalleled phenomenon, that these 
poor fishermen should remind other 
men of Christ! Stupendous victory 
and mystery of regeneration that mor- 
tal men should suggest to the world, 
God ! 

There is something almost melting 
in the way His Houten boranen ee 
John especially, speak of the influence 
of Christ. John lived himself in 
daily wonder at Him; he was over- 
powered, over-awed, entranced, trans- 
figured. To his mind it was impossi- 
ble for any one to come. under this 
influence and ever be the same again. 
““Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth 


9% 


not,” he said. It was inconceivable 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. IQI 


that he should sin, as inconceivable as 
that ice should live in a burning sun, 
or darkness coexist with noon. If any 
one did sin, it was to John the sim- 
ple proof that he could never have met 
Christ. ‘‘ Whosoever sinneth,” he ex- 
ching “hath not seen A/zz, neither 
known fim.’ Sin was abashed in 
Enis «Presence. Its: roots * withered: 
Its sway and victory were forever at 
an end. 

But these were His contemporaries. 
It was easy for ¢hem to be influenced 
by Him, for they were every day and 
all the day together. But how can 
we mirror that which we have never 
seen? How can all this stupendous 


result be produced by a Memory, by 


192 THE CHANGED LIFE, 


the scantiest of all Biographies, by 
One who lived and left this earth 
eighteen hundred years ago? How 
can modern men to-day make Christ, 
the absent Christ, their most constant 
companion still? The answer is that 
Friendship is a spiritual thing. It is 
independent of Matter, or Space, or 
Time. That which I love in my 
friend is not that which I see. What 
influences me in my friend is not his 
body but his spirit. It would have 
been an ineffable experience truly to 


have lived at that time — 


“JT think when I read the sweet story of old 
How when Jesus was here among men, 
He took little children like lambs to his fold, 

I should like to have been with Him then.. 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 193 


“T wish that His hand had been laid on my 
head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 
And that I had seen His kind look when he said, 
‘Let the little ones come unto me.’” 


And yet, if Christ were to come into 
the world again few of us probably 
would ever have a chance of seeing 
Him. Millions of her subjects, in this 
little country, have never seen their 
own Queen. And there would be 
millions of the subjects of Christ who 
could never get within speaking dis- 
tance of Him if He were here. Our 
companionship with Him, like all true 
companionship, is a_ spiritual com- 
munion. All friendship, all love, 


human and Divine, is purely spiritual, 


194 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


It was after He was risen that He 
influenced even the disciples most. 
Hence in reflecting the character of 
Christ, it is no real obstacle that we 
may never have been in visible con- 
tact with Himself. 

There lived once a young girl whose 
perfect grace of character was the 
wonder of those who knew her. She 
wore on her neck a gold locket which 
no one was ever allowed to open. One 
day, in a moment of unusual confi- 
dence, one of her companions was 
allowed to touch its spring and learn 
its secret. She saw written these — 
words—‘“ Whom having not seen, I 
love.’ That was the secret of her 
beautiful life. She had been changed 


into the Same Image. 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. I95 


Now this is not imitation, but a 
much deeper thing. Mark this dis- 
tinction. For the difference in the 
process, as well as in the result, may 
be as great as that between a photo- 
graph secured by the infallible pencil 
of the sun, and the rude outline from 
a school-boy’s chalk. Imitation is 
mechanical, reflection organic. The 
one is occasional, the other habitual. 
In the one case, man comes to God 
and imitates Him ; in the other, God 
comes to man and imprints Himself 
upon him. It is quite true that there 
is an imitation of Christ which amounts 
to reflection. But Paul’s term includes 
all that the other holds, and is open to 


no mistake. 


196 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


“Make Christ your most constant 
companion ” — this is what it practically 
means for us. Be more under His in- 
fluence than under any other influence. 
Ten minutes spent in His society every 
day, ay, two minutes if it be face to 
face, and heart to heart, will make the 
whole day different. Every character 
has an inward spring, let Christ be it. 
Every action has a key-note, let Christ 
‘set it. Yesterday you got a certain 
letter. You sat down and wrote a re- 
ply which almost scorched the paper. 
You picked the cruellest adjectives 
you knew and:sent it forth, without a 
pang, to do its ruthless work. You 
did that because your life was set in 


the wrong key. You began the day 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. I97 


with the mirror placed at the wrong 
angle. To-morrow, at day-break, turn 
it towards Him, and even to your: 
enemy the fashion of your counte- 
nance will be changed. Whatever 
you then do, one thing you will find 
you could not do — you could not write 
that letter. Your first impulse may be: 
the same, your judgment may be un- 
changed, but if you try it the ink will 
dry on your pen, and you will rise 
from your desk an unavenged, but 
a greater and more Christian, man. 
Throughout the whole day your ac- 
tions, down to the last detail, will do 
homage to that early vision. Yester- 
day you thought mostly about your- 
self. To-day the poor will meet you, 


ae 


198 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


and you will feed them. The help- 
less, the tempted, the sad, will throng 
about you, and each you will befriend. 
Where were all these people yester- 
day? Where they are to-day, but you 
did not see them. It is in reflected 
light that the poor are seen. But your 
soul to-day is not at the ordinary angle. 
“Things which are not seen” are 
visible. For a féw short hours you 
live the Eternal Life. The eternal, 
life, the life of faith, is simply the life 
of the higher vision. Faith is an atti- 
tude — a mirror set at the right angle. 

When to-morrow is over, and in the 
evening you review it, you will won- 
der how you did it. You will not be 


conscious that you strove for anything, 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 199 


or imitated anything, or crucified any- 
thing. You will be conscious of 
Christ; that he was with you, that 
without compulsion you were yet com- 
pelled, that without force, or noise, or 
proclamation, the revolution was ac- 
complished. You do not congratulate 
yourself as one who has done a mighty 
deed, or achieved a personal success, 
or stored up a fund of ‘Christian 
experience”’ to ensure the same result 
again. What you are conscious of is 
“the glory of the Lord.” And what 
the world is conscious of, if the result 
be a true one, is also “the glory of the 
Lord.” In looking at a mirror one 
does not see the mirror, or think of it, 


but only of what it reflects. For a 


200 THE CHANGED LIFE. — 


mirror never calls attention to itself — 
except when there are flaws in it. 

That this is a real experience and 
not a vision, that this life is possible to 
men, is being lived by men to-day, 
is simple biographical fact. From a 
thousand witnesses I cannot forbear to 
summon one. The following are the 
words of one of the highest intellects 
this age has known, a man who shared 
the burdens of his country as few have 
done, and who, not in the shadows of 
old age, but in the high noon of his 
success, gave this confession —I quote 
it with only a few abridgments — to the 
world: | 

“T want to speak to-night only a 
little, but that little I desire to speak of 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 201 


the sacred name of Christ, who is my 
life, my inspiration, my hope, and my 
surety. I cannot help stopping and 
looking back upon the past. And I 
wish, as if I had never done it before, 
to bear witness, not only that it is by 
the grace of God, but that it is by the 
grace of God, as manifested in Christ * 
Jesus, that I am what I am. I recog- 
nize the sublimity and grandeur of the 
revelation of God in His eternal father- 
hood as one that made the heavens, 
that founded the earth, and that regards 
all the tribes of the earth, compre- 
hending them in one universal mercy ; 
but it is the God that is manifested 
in Jesus Christ, revealed by His life, 
made known by the inflections of His 


202). THE CHANGED LIFE. 


feelings, by His discourse, and by His 
deeds —it is that God that I desire to 
confess to-night, and of whom I desire 
to say, ‘By the love of God in Christ 
Jesus I am what I am.’ 

«Tf you ask me precisely what I 
mean by that, I say, frankly, that 
more than any recognized influence of 
my father or my mother upon me; 
more than the social influence of all 
the members of my father’s household, 
more, so far as I can trace it, or so far 
as Iam made aware of it, than all the 
social influences of every kind, Christ 
has had the formation of my mind and 
my disposition. My hidden ideals of 
what is beautiful I have drawn from 


Christ. My thoughts of what is 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE, 203 


manly, and ‘noble, and | pure, have 
almost all of them arisen from the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Many men have 
educated themselves by reading Plu- 
tarch’s Lives of the Ancient Worthies, 
and setting before themselves one and 
another of these that in different ages 
have achieved celebrity; and _ they 
have recognized the great power of 
these men on themselves. Now I do 
not perceive that poet, or philosopher, 7 
or reformer, or general, or any other : 
great man, ever has dwelt in my imagi- 
nation and in my thought as the simple 
Jesus has. For more than twenty-five | 
years I instinctively have gone to Christ — 
to draw a measure and a rule for every- 


thing. Whenever there has been a 


204 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


necessity for it, I have sought —and at 
last almost spontaneously —to throw 
myself into the companionship of 
Christ; and early, by my imagination, 
I could see Him standing and looking 
quietly and lovingly upon me. There 


seemed almost to drop from His face 


an influence upon me that suggested 
what was the right thing in the con- 


trolling of passion, in the subduing of 


pride, in the overcoming of selfishness; 
and itis from Christ, manifested to my 
inward eye, that I have consciously 
derived more ideals, more models, 
more influences, than any other human 
character whatever. 

“That is not all. I feel conscious 
that I have derived from the Lord 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 205 


Jesus Christ every thought that 
makes heaven a reality to me, and 
every thought that paves the road that 
lies between me and heaven. All my 
conceptions of the progress of grace 
in the soul; all the steps by which 
divine life is evolved; all the ideals 
that overhang the blessed sphere which 
awaits us beyond this world —these 
are derived from the Saviour. The life 
that I now live in the flesh I live by 
the faith of the Son of God. 

“That is not all. Much as my 
future includes all these elements — 
which go to make the blessed fabric 
of earthly life, yet, after all, what the 
summer is compared with all. its 


earthly products — flowers, and leaves, 


206 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
@ 


and grass—that is Christ compared 
with all the products of Christ in 
my mind and in my _ soul. All 
the flowers and leaves of sympa- 
thy; all the twining joys that come 
from my heart as a Christian — 
these I take and hold in the fitered 
but they are to me what the flowers 
and leaves of summer are compared 
with the sun that makes the summer. 
Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the 
beginning and the end of my better 
life. 

‘‘When I read the Bible, I gather a 
great deal from the Old Testament, 
and from the Pauline portions of the 
New Testament; but after all, I am 
conscious that the fruit of the Bible 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 207. 


is’ Christ’ DPhatris what. I ‘read tt for,': 
and.that is what I find that is worth 
reading. I have had a hunger to be 
loved of .Christ. You all know, in 
some relations, what it is to be hungry 
for love. Your heart seems unsatisfied 
till you can draw something more 
toward you from those that are dearest 
to you. There have been times when 
I have had an unspeakable _heart- 
hunger for Christ’s love. My sense 
of sin is never strong when I think of 
the law; my sense of sin is strong 
when I think of love —if there is any 
difference between law and love. It 
is when drawing near the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and longing to be loved, that I 


have the most vivid sense of unsym- 


208 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


metry, of imperfection, of absolute 
unworthiness, and of my sinfulness. 
Character and conduct are never so 
vividly set before me as when in 
silence I bend in the presence of 
Christ, revealed not in wrath, but in 
love to me. I never so much long to 
be lovely, that I may be loved, as 
when I have this revelation of Christ 
before my mind. 

“In looking back upon my experi- 
ence, that part of my life which stands 
out, and which I remember most 
vividly, is just that part that has had 
some conscious association with Christ. 
All the rest is pale, and thin, and lies 
like clouds on the horizon. Doctrinés, 


systems, measures, methods — what 


THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 209 


may be called the necessary mechani- 
cal and external part of worship; the 
part which the senses would recog- 
nize — this seems to have withered and 
fallen off like leaves of last summer; 
but that part which has taken hold of 
Christ abides.” 

Can any one hear this life-music, 
with its throbbing refrain of Christ, 
and remain unmoved by envy or 
desire? Yet, till we have lived like 


this we have never lived at all. 


210 THE CHANGED LIFE, 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 


HEN you reduce religion to a 

common Friendship? A _ com- 
mon Friendship — who talks of a com- 
mon Friendship? There is no such 
thing in the world. On earth no word 
is more sublime. Friendship is the 
nearest thing we know to what religion 
is. God is love. And to make reli- 
gion akin to Friendship is simply to 
give it the highest expression con- 
ceivable by man. But if by demur- 
Fine tov a common friendship”’ is 


meant a protest against the greatest 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 211 


and the holiest in religion being spoken 
of in intelligible terms, then I am 
afraid the objection is all too real. 
Men always look for a mystery when 
one talks of sanctification; some mys- 
tery apart from that which must ever 
be mysterious wherever Spirit works. 
It is thought some peculiar secret 
lies behind it, some occult experience 
which only the initiated know. Thou- 
sands of persons go to church every 
Sunday hoping to solve this mystery. 
At meetings, at conferences, many a 
time they have reached what they 
thought was the very brink of it, but 
somehow no further revelation came. 
Poring over religious books, how often 


were they not within a paragraph of 


212 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


it; the next ‘page, the next ‘sentence, 
would discover all, and they would be 
borne on a flowing tide forever. But 
nothing happened. The next sentence 
and the next page were read, and 
still it eluded them; and though the 
promise of its coming kept faithfully 
up to the end, the last chapter found 
them still pursuing. Why did nothing 
happen? Because there was nothing 
to happen — nothing of the kind they 
were looking for. Why did it elude 
them? Because there was no “it.” 
When shall we learn that the pursuit 
of holiness is simply the pursuit of 
Christ ?. When shall we substitute for 
the “‘it’’ of a fictitious aspiration, the 


approach to a Living Friend? Sanc- 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 213 


tity is in character and not in moods; 
Divinity in our own plain calm human- 
ity, and in no mystic rapture of the 
soul. 

And yet there are others who, for 
exactly a contrary reason, will find 
scant satisfaction here. Their com- 
plaint is not that a religion expressed 
in terms of Friendship is too homely, 
but that it is still too mystical. To 
“‘abide”’ in Christ, to ‘make Christ 
our most constant companion,” is to 
them the purest mysticism. They 
want ‘something absolutely tangible 
and absolutely direct. These are not 
the poetical souls who seek a sign, a 
mysticism in excess; but the prosaic 


natures whose want is mathematical 


214 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


definition in details. Yet it is perhaps 
not possible to reduce this problem 
to much more rigid elements. The 
beauty of Friendship is its infinity. 
One can never evacuate life of mysti- 
cism. Home is full of it, love is full 
of it, religion is full of it. Why 
stumble at that in the relation of man 
to Christ which is natural in the rela- 
tion of man to man? 

If any one cannot conceive or real- 
ize a mystical relation with Christ, per- 
haps all that can be done is to help 
him to step on to it by still plainer 
analogies from common life. How do 
I know Shakespeare or Dante? By 
communing with their words and 


thoughts. Many men know Dante 


‘THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 215 


better than their own fathers.” He 
influences them more. As a spiritual 
presence he is more near to them, as 
a spiritual force more real. Is there 
any reason why a greater than Shake- 
speare or Dante, who also walked this 
earth, who left great words behind 
Him, who has greater works every- 
where in the world now, should not. 
also instruct, inspire, and mould the 
characters of men? [I do not limit 
Christ’s influence to this.. It is this, 
and it is more. But Christ, so far 
from resenting or discouraging this 
relation of Friendship, Himself pro- 
posed it. ‘Abide in me” was almost 
His last word to the world. And He 
partly met the difficulty of those who. 


216 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


feel its intangibleness by adding the 
practical clause, “If ye abide in Me 
and My words abide in you.” 

Begin with His words. Words can 
scarcely ever be long impersonal. 
Christ Himself was a Word, a word 
made Flesh. Make His words flesh ; 
do them, live them, and you must live 
Christ. “He that keepeth My com- 
mandments, he it is that loveth Me.” 
Obey Him and you must love Him. 
Abide in Him and you must obey Him. 
Cultivate His Friendship. Live after 
Christ, in His Spirit, as in His Pres- 
ence, and it is difficult to think what 
more you can-do. Take this at least 
as a first lesson, as introduction. If 


you cannot at once and always feel 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 217 


the play of His life upon yours, watch 
for it also indirectly. “The whole 
earth is full of the character of the 
Lord.” Christ is the Light of the 
world, and much of His Light is 
reflected from things in the world— 
even from clouds. Sunlight is stored 
in every leaf, from leaf through coal, 
and it comforts us thence when days 
are ,dark and we cannot see the sun. 
Christ shines through men, through 
books, through history, through nature, 
music, art. Look for Him there. 
““Every day one should either look at 
a beautiful picture, or hear beautiful 
music, or read a beautiful poem.” 
The real danger of mysticism is not 


making it broad enough. 


218 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


Do not think that nothing is happen- 
ing because you do not see yourself 
grow, or hear the whir of the ma- 
chinery. All great things grow noise- 
lessly. You can see a mushroom 
grow, but never a child. Mr. Darwin 
tells us that Evolution proceeds by 
“numerous, successive, and __ slight 
modifications.” Paul knew that, and 
put it, only in more beautiful words, 
into the heart of his formula. He 
said for the comforting of all slowly 
perfecting souls that they grew “from 
character to character.” “The in- 
ward man,” he says elsewhere, “is 
renewed from day to day.” All 
thorough work is slow; all true devel- 


opment by minute, slight, and insen- 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 219 


sible Pee tron enioces: The higher the 
structure, moreover, the slower the 
progress. As the biologist runs his 
eye over the long Ascent of Life he 
sees the lowest forms of animals de- 
velop in an hour; the next above these 
reach maturity in a day; those higher 
still take weeks or months to perfect; 
but the few at the top demand the long 
experiment of years. If a child and 
an ape are born on the same day, the 
last will be in full possession of its fac- 
ulties and doing the active work of 
life before the child has left its cradle. 
Life is the cradle of eternity. As the 
man is to the animal in the slowness of 
his evolution, so is the spiritual man to 


the natural man. Foundations which 


220 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


have to bear the weight of an eternal 
life must be surely laid. Character is 
to wear forever; who will wonder or 
grudge that it cannot be developed in 
a day? | 

To await the growing of. a soul, 
nevertheless, is an almost Divine act 
of faith. How pardonable, surely, the 
impatience of deformity with itself, 
of a consciously despicable character 
standing before Christ, wondering, 
yearning, hungering to be like that! 
Yet must one trust the process fear- 
lessly, and without misgiving. “The 
Lord the Spirit” will do His part. 
The tempting expedient is, in haste 
for abrupt or visible progress, to try 


some method less spiritual, or to defeat 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 221 


the end by watching for effects instead 
of keeping the eye on the Cause. A 
photograph prints from the negative 
only while exposed to the sun. While 
the artist is looking to see how it is 
getting on he simply stops the getting 
on. Whatever of wise supervision the 
soul may need, it is certain it can 
never be over-exposed, or that, being 
exposed, anything else in the world 
can improve the result or quicken it. 
The.’ creation. “of .a.new. ‘heart, ‘the 
renewing of a right spirit, is an om- 
nipotent work of God. Leave it to the 
Creator. “He which hath begun a 
good work in you will perfect it unto 
that day.” 


No man, nevertheless, who feels the 


222 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


worth and solemnity of what is at 
stake will be careless as to his prog- 
ress. To become like Christ is the 
only thing in the world worth caring 
for, the thing before which every am- 
bition of man is folly, and all. lower 
achievement vain. Those only who 
make this quest the supreme desire and 
passion of their lives can ever begin to 
hope to reach it. If, therefore, it has 
seemed up to this point as if all de- 
pended on passivity, let me now assert, 
with conviction more intense, that all 
depends on activity. A religion of 
effortless adoration may be a religion 
for an angel, but never for a man. 
Not in the contemplative, but in the 


active, lies true hope; not in rapture, 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT, 223 


but in reality, lies true life; not in the 
realm of ideals, but among tangible 
things, is man’s sanctification wrought. 
Resolution, effort, pain, self-crucifixion, 
agony —all the things already dis- 
missed as futile in themselves must 
now be restored to office, and a tenfold 
responsibility laid upon them. For 
what is their office? Nothing less than 
to move the vast inertia of the soul, 
and place it, and keep it where the 
spiritual forces will act upon it. It is 
to rally the forces of the will, and 
keep the surface’ of the mirror bright 
and ever in position. It is to uncover 
the face which is to look at Christ, and 
draw down the veil when unhallowed 


sights are near. You have, perhaps, 


224 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


gone with an astronomer to watch him 
photograph the spectrum of a star. 
As you entered the dark vault of the 
observatory you saw him begin by 
lighting a candle. To see the star 
with? No; but to see to adjust the 
instrument,.to see the'star with. It was 
the star that was going to take the pho- 
tograph ; it was, also, the astronomer. 
For a long time he worked in the 
dimness, screwing tubes and polishing 
lenses and adjusting reflectors, and 
only after much labor the finely 
focussed instrument was brought to 
bear. Then he blew out the light, - 
and left the star to do its work upon. 
the plate alone. The day’s task for 


the Christian is to bring his instrument 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 225 


to bear. Having done that he may 
blow out his candle. All the evidences 
of Christianity which have _ brought 
him there, all aids to Faith, all acts 
of worship, all the leverages of the 
Church, all Prayer and Meditation, all 
girding of the Will—these lesser proc- 
esses, these candle-light activities for 
that supreme hour, may be set aside. 
But, remember, it is but for an hour. 
The wise man will be he who quickest 
lights his candle; the wisest he who 
never lets it out. To-morrow, the 
next moment, he, a poor, darkened, 
blurred soul, may need it again to 
_ focus the. Image better, to take a 
mote off the lens, to clear the mirror 
from a breath with which the world 
has dulled it. 


226 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


No readjustment is ever required on 
‘behalf of the Star. That is one great 
fixed point in this shifting universe. 
But the world moves. And each day, 
each hour, demands a further motion 
and readjustment for the soul. A tel- 
escope in an observatory follows a 
star by clockwork, but the clockwork 
of the soul is called zhe Will, Hence, 
while the soul in passivity reflects the 
Image of the Lord, the Will in intense 
activity holds the mirror in position 
lest the drifting motion of the world 
bear it beyond the line of vision. To 
“follow Christ” is largely to keep the 
soul in such position as will allow for 
the motion of the earth. And this 


calculated counteracting of the move- 


THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 227 


ments of the world, this holding of the 
mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, 
this steadying of the faculties unerr- 
ingly through cloud and earthquake, 
fire and sword, is the stupendous co- 
operating labor of the Will. It is all 
man’s work. It is all Christ’s work. 
In practice it is both; in theory it is 
both. But the wise man will say in 
practice, “It depends upon myself.” 

In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in 
Paris there stands a famous statue. It 
was the last work of a great genius, 
who, like many a genius, was very 
poor and lived in a garret, which 
served as a studio and sleeping-room 
alike. When the statue was all but 


finished, one midnight a sudden frost 


228 THE CHANGED LIFE. 


fell upon Paris. The sculptor lay 
awake in the fireless room and thought 
of the still moist clay, thought how the 
‘water would freeze in the pores and 
destroy in an hour the dream of his 
life. So the old man rose from his 
couch and heaped the _ bed-clothes 
reverently round his work. In _ the 
morning when the neighbors entered 
the room the sculptor was dead. But 
the statue lived. 

The Image of Christ that is forming 
within us—that is life’s one charge. 
Let every project stand aside for that. 
‘Til. Christ be. formed,” ne) man’s 
work is finished, no religion crowned, 
no life has fulfilled its end. Is the in- 


finite task begun? When, how, are 





THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 229 


we to be different? Time cannot 
change men. Death cannot change 


men. Christ can. Wherefore put on 
Christ. 


| “FIRST!” 
A TALK WITH BOYS. 


I HAVE three heads to give you. The first is ‘‘Geo 
phy,’’ the second is ‘‘Arithmetic,’’ and the third is 


‘* Grammar. ’”’ 
GEOGRAPHY. 


First. Geography tells us where to find places. Where 
is the kingdom of God? It is said that when a Prussian 
officer was killed in the Franco-Prussian war, a map of 
France was very often found in his pocket. When we 
wish to occupy a country, we ought to know its geog- 
raphy. Now, where is the kingdom of God? <A boy over 
there says, ‘‘It is in heaven.’’ No, it is not in heaven. 
Another boy says, ‘‘It is in the Bible.’’ No; it is not 
in the Bible. Another boy says, ‘‘It must be in the 
Church.’’ No; it is not in the Church. Heaven is only 
the Capital of the kingdom of God; the Bible is the 
Guide-book to it; the Church is the weekly Parade of 
those who belong to it. If you would turn to the seven- 
teenth chapter of St. Luke you will find out where the 
kingdom of God really is. ‘‘The kingdom of God is 
within you’’—within you. The kingdom of God is 
anside people. 

I remember once taking a walk by the river near where 
the Falls of Niagara are, and I noticed a remarkable fig- 
ure walking along the river bank. I had been some time 
in America. I had seen black men, and red men, and 
yellow men, and white men; black men, the Negroes; 
red men, the Indians; yellow men, the Chinese; white 
men, the Americans. But this man looked different in 
his dress from anything I had ever seen. When he came 
a little closer, I saw he was wearing a kilt; when he 
came a little nearer still, I saw that he was dressed 
exactly like a Highland soldier. When he came quite 
near, I said to him, ‘‘What are you doing here?’’ ‘‘Why 


DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 231 


should I not be here?’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t you know this 
is British soil? When you cross the river you come into 
Canada.’’ This soldier was thousands of miles from 
England, and yet he was in the kingdom of England. 
Wherever there is an English heart beating loyal to the 
Queen of Britain, there is England. Wherever there is 
a boy whose heart is loyal to the King of the kingdom of 
God, the kingdom of God is within him. 

What is the kingdom of God? Every kingdom has its 
exports, its products. Go down to the river here, and 
you will find ships coming in with cotton; you know 
they come from America. You will find ships with 
tea; you know they are from China. Ships with wool; 
you know they come from Australia. Ships with sugar ; 
you know they come from Java.. What comes from the 
kingdom of God? Again we must refer to our Guide- 
book. Turn to Romans, and we shall find what the 
kingdom of God is. I will read it: ‘‘The kingdom of 
God is righteousness, peace, joy’’—three things. ‘‘The 
kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, joy.’’ Right- 
eousness, of course, is just doing what is right. Any 
boy who does what is right has the kingdom of God 
within him. Any boy who, instead of being quarrel- 
some, lives at peace with other boys, has the kingdom of 
God withinhim Any boy whose heart is filled with joy 
because he does what is right, has the kingdom of God 
within him. The kingdom of God is not going to reli- 
gious meetings, and hearing strange religious experiences ; 
the kingdom of God is doing what is right—living at 
peace with all men, being filled with joy in the Holy 
Ghost. 

Boys, if you are going to be Christians, be Christians 
as boys, and not as your grandmothers. A grandmother 
has to be a Christian as a grandmother, and that is the 
right and thebeautiful thing for her ; but if you cannot read 
your Bible by the hour as your grandmother can, or de- 
light in meetings as she can, don’t think you are neces- 
sarily a bad boy. When you are your grandmother’s age 
you will have your grandmother’s kind of religion. 
Meantime, be a Christian as a boy. Live a boy’s life. 
Do the straight thing; seek the kingdom of righteousness 
and honor and truth. Keep the peace with the boys 
about you, and be filled with the joy of being a loyal, 
and simple, and natural, and boy like servant of Christ. 

You can very easily tell a house, or workshop, or an 


232 DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 


office where the kingdom of God is not. The first thing 
you see in that place is that the ‘‘straight thing’’ is not 
always done. Customers do not get fair play. You are 
in danger of learning to cheat and tolie. Better, a thou- 
sand times, to starve than to stay in a place where you 
cannot do what is right. 

Or, when you go into your workshop, you find every- 
body sulky, touchy, and ill-tempered; everybody at 
daggers drawn with everybody else; some of the men not 
on speaking terms with some of the others, and the 
whole feel of the place miserable and unhappy. The 
kingdom of God is not there, for it is peace. It is the 
kingdom of the Devil that is anger and wrath and 
malice. 

If you want to get the kingdom of God into your 
workshop, or into your home, let the quarreling be 
stopped. Live in peace and harmony and brotherliness 
with every one. For the kingdom of God is the king- 
dom of brothers. It is a great society, founded by Jesus 
Christ, of all the people who try to be like Him, and live 
to make the world better and sweeter and happier. 
Wherever a boy is trying to do that, in the house or in 
the street, in the workshop or on the baseball field, there 
is the kingdom of God. And every boy, however small 
or obscure or poor, who is seeking that, is a member of 
it. You see now, I hope, what the kingdom is. 


ARITHMETIC. sia 
I pass, therefore, to the second head: What was it? 
‘*Arithmetic.’’ Are there any arithmetic words in this 


text? ‘‘Added,’’ says one boy. Quite right, added. 
What other arithmetic word? ‘‘First.’’ Yes, jfirst— 
‘*first,’’ ‘‘added.’’ Now, don’t you think you could not 
have anything better to seek “‘first’’ than the things I 
have named—to do what is right, to live at peace, and 
be always making those about you happy? You see at 
once why Christ tells us to seek these things first—be- 
cause they are the best worth seeking. Do you know 
anything better than these three things, anything hap- 
pier, purer, nobler? If you do, seek them first. But if 
you de not, seek first the kingdom of God. I am not 
here this afternoon to tell you to be religious. You 
know that. Iam not here to tell you to seek the king- 
dom of God. I have come to tell you to seek the king- 
dom of God first. First. Not many people do that. 


DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 933 


They put a little religion into their life—once a week, 
perhaps. They might just as well let it alone. It is not 
worth seeking the kingdom of God unless we seek it jirst. 
Suppose you take the helm out of a shipand hang it over 
the bow, and send that ship to sea, will it ever reach 
the other side? Certainly not. It will drift about any- 
how. Keep religion in its place, and it will take you 
straight through life, and straight to your Father in 
heaven when life is over. But if you do not put it in 
its place, you may just as well have nothing to do with 
it. Religion out of its place in a human life is the most 
miserable thing in the world. There is nothing that 
requires so much to be kept in its place as religion, and 
its place is what? second? third? ‘‘First.’’ Boys, carry 
that home with you to-day—/first the kingdom of God. 
Make it so that it will be natural to you to think about 
that the very first thing. 

There was a boy in Glasgow apprenticed to a gentle- 
man who made telegraphs. The gentleman told me this 
himself. One day this boy was up on the top of a four- 
story house with a number of men fixing up a telegraph 
wire. The work was all but done. It was getting late, 
and the men said they were going away home, and the 
boy was to nip off the ends of the wire himself. Before 
going down they told him to be sure to go back to the 
workshop, when he was finished, with his master’s 
tools. ‘‘Do not leave any of them lying about, whatever 
you do,’’ said the foreman. The boy climbed up the 
pole and began to nip off the ends of the wire. It was a 
very cold winter night, and the dusk was gathering. 
He lost his hold and fell upon the slates, slid down, and 
then over and over to the ground below. A clothes-rope, 
stretched across the ‘‘green’’ on to which he was just 
about to fall, caught him on the chest and broke his fall; 
but the shock was terrible, and he lay unconscious 
among some clothes upon the green. An old woman 
came out; seeing her rope broken and the clothes all 
soiled, thought the boy was drunk, shook him, scolded 
him, and went for the policeman. And the boy with the 
shaking came back to consciousness, rubbed his eyes, 
and got upon his feet. What do you think he. did? He 
staggered, half blind, away up the stairs. He climbed 
the ladder. He got on to the roof of the house. He 
gathered up his tools, put them into his basket, took 
them down, and when he got to the ground again, 


234 DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 


fainted dead away. Just then the policeman came, saw 
there was something seriously wrong, and carried him 
away to the hospital, where he lay for some time. I am 
glad to say he got better. What was his first thought at 
that terrible moment? His duty. He was not thinking 
of himself; he was thinking about his master. First, 
the kingdom of God. 

But there is another arithmetic word. What is it? 
“*Added.’’ There is not one boy here who does not 
know the difference between addition and subtraction. 
Now, that is a very important difference in religion, 
because—and it is a very strange thing—very few people 
know the difference when they begin to talk about reli- 
gion. They often tell boys that if they seek the kingdom 
of God, everything else is going to be subtracted from 
them. They tell them that they are going to become 
gloomy, miserable, and will lose everything that makes a 
boy’s life worth living—that they will have to stop base- 
ball and story-books, and become little old men, and 
spend all their time in going to meetings and in singing 
hymns. Now, that is not true. Christ never said any- 
thing like that. Christ says we are to ‘‘seek first the 
kingdom of God,’’ and everything else worth having is 
to be added unto us. If there is anything I would like 
you to take away with you this afternoon, it is these two 
arithmetic words—‘‘first’’ and ‘‘added.’’ I do not 
mean by added that if you become religious you are all 
going to become rich. Here is a boy, who, in sweeping 
out the shop to-morrow morning, finds sixpence lying 
among the orange boxes. Well, nobody has missed it. 
He puts it in his pocket, and it begins to burn a hole 
there. By breakfast time he wishes that sixpence were 
in his master’s pocket. And by and by he goes to his 
master. He says (to himself, and not to his master) : 
‘‘T was at the Boys’ Brigade yesterday, and I was to 
seek first that which was right.’’ Then he says to his 
master, ‘‘ Please, sir, here is sixpence that I found upon 
the floor.’’ The master puts it in the “‘till.’’ What has 
the boy got in his pocket? Nothing; but he has got the 
kingdom of God in his heart. He has laid up treasure in 
heaven, which is of infinitely more worth than six- 
pence. Now, that boy does not find a shilling on his 
way home. I have known that happen, but that is not 
what is meant by ‘‘adding.’’ It does not mean that God 
is going to pay him in his own coin, for He pays in 
better coin. 


DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 235 


Yet I remember once hearing of a boy who was paid 
in both ways. He was very, very poor. He lived ina 
foreign country, and his mother said to him one day that 
he must go into the great city and start in business, and 
she took his coat and cut it open and sewed between the 
lining and the coat forty golden dinars, which she had 
saved up for many years to start him in life. She told 
him to take care of robbers as he went across the desert ; 
and as he was going out of the door she said: ‘‘My boy, 
I have only two words for you—‘Fear God, and never 
tell a lie.’’’ The boy started off, and toward evening he 
saw glittering in the distance the minarets of the great 
city, but between the city and himself he saw a cloud 
of dust, it came nearer; presently he saw that it was a 
band of robbers. One of the robbers left the rest and 
rode toward him, and said: ‘‘ Boy, what have you got?’’ 
And the boy looked him in the face and said: ‘‘I have 
forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.’’ And the 
robber laughed and wheeled round his horse and rode: 
away back. He would not believe the boy. Presently 
another robber came, and he said: ‘‘ Boy, what have you 
got?’ ‘‘Forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.’’ 
The robber said: ‘‘The boy is a fool,’’ and wheeled his. 
horse and rode away back. By and by the robber cap- 
tain came, and he said: ‘‘Boy, what have you got?’’ ‘‘I 
have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat.’’ And 
the robber dismounted and put his hand over the boy’s 
breast, felt something round, counted one, two, three, 
four, five, till he counted out the forty golden coin. He 
looked the boy in the face, and said: ‘‘Why did you tell 
me that?’ The boy said: ‘‘Because of God and my 
mother.’’ And the robber leaned on his spear and 
thought, and said: ‘‘Wait a moment.’’ He mounted his. 
horse, rode back to the rest of the robbers, and came 
back in about five minutes with his dresschanged. This: 
time he looked not like a robber, but like a merchant. 
He took the boy up on his horse and said: ‘‘My boy, I 
have long wanted to do something for my God and for 
my mother, and I have this moment renounced my rob- 
ber’s life. I am also a merchant. I have a large busi- 
ness house in the city. I want you to come and live: 
with me, to teach me about your God; and you will be 
rich, and your mother some day will come and live with: 
us.’? And it all happened. By seeking first the king- 
dom of God, all these things were added unto him. 


236 DRUMMOND'’S ADDRESSES. 


Boys, banish forever from your minds the idea that 
religion is subtraction. It does not tell us to give things 
up, but rather gives us something so much better that 
they give themselves up. When you see a boy on the 
street whipping a top, you know, perhaps, that you could 
not make that boy happier than by giving him a top, a 
whip, and half an hour to whip it. But next birthday, 
when he looks back, he says, ‘‘What a goose I was last 
year to be delighted with a top; what I want now isa 
baseball bat.’’? Then when he becomes an old man he 
does not care in the least for a baseball bat; he wants 
rest, and a snug fireside, and a newspaper every day. 
He wonders how he could ever have taken up _ his 
thoughts with baseball bats and whipping tops. Now, 
when a boy becomes a Christian, he grows out of the 
evil things one by one—that is to say, if they are really 
evil—which he used to set his heart upon (of course I do 
not mean baseball bats, for they are not evils); and so 
instead of telling people to give up things, we are safer 
to tell them to ‘‘seek first the kingdom of God,’’ and 
then they will get new things and better things, and the 
old things will drop off of themselves. This is what is 
meant by the ‘‘new heart.’’ It means that God puts 
into us new thoughts and new wishes, and we become 
quite different boys. 


GRAMMAR. 


Lastly, and very shortly. What was the third head? 
**‘Grammar.’’ Right: Grammar. Now, I require a clever 
boy to answer the next question. What is the verb? 
“*Seek.’? Very good: ‘‘Seek.’’ What mood is it in? 
“*Imperative mood.’’ What does that mean? ‘‘Com- 
mand.’’ You boys of the Boys’ Brigade know what 
commands are, What is the soldier’s first lesson? 
‘‘Obedience.’’ Have you obeyed this command? Re- 
member the imperative mood of these words, ‘‘ Seek first 
the kingdom of God.’’» This is the command of your 
King. It must be done. I have been trying to show 
you what a splendid thing itis; what a reasonable thing 
it is; what a happy thing it is; but beyond all these 
reasons it is a thing that must be done, because we are 
commanded to do it by our Captain. It is one of the fin- 
est things about the Boys’ Brigade that it always appeals 
to Christ as its highest officer, and takes its commands 
from Him. Now, there is His command to seek first the 


~ 


DRUMVOND’S ADDRESSES. 937 


kingdom of God. Have you done it? ‘‘Well,’’ I know. 
some boys will say, ‘‘we are going to have a good time, 
enjoy life, and then we are going to seek—last—the 
kingdom of God.’’ Now that is mean; itis nothing else 
than mean for a boy to take all the good gifts that God 
has given him, and then give Him nothing back in 
return but his wasted life. 

God wants boys’: lives, not only their souls. It is for 
active service soldiers are drilled and trained and fed 
and armed, That is why you and I are in the world at 
all—not to prepare to go out of it some day; but to serve 
God actively in it now. It is monstrous and shameful 
and cowardly to talk of seeking the kingdom last. It is 
skirking duty, abandoning one’s rightful post, playing 
into the enemy’s hand by doing nothing to turn his 
flank. Every hour a kingdom iscoming in your heart, in 
your home, in the world near you, be it a kingdom of 
darkness or a kingdom of light. You are placed where 
you are, in a particular business, in a particular street, 
to help on there the kingdom of God. You cannot do 
that when you are old and ready to die. By that time 
your companions will have fought their fight, and lost or 
won. If they lose, will you not be sorry that you did 
not help them? Will you not regret that only at the last 
you helped the kingdom of God? Perhaps you will not 
be able to do it then. And then your life has been lost 
indeed. . 

Very few people have the opportunity to seek the 
kingdom of God at the end. Christ, knowing all that, 
knowing that religion was a thing for our life, not 
merely for our death-bed, has laid this command apon 
us now: ‘‘Seek first the kingdom of God.’’ I am going 
to leave you with this text itself. Every Brigade boy 
in the world should obey it. 

Boys, before you go to work to-morrow, before you go 
to sleep to-night, before you go to the Sunday-school this 
afternoon, before you go out of the door of the City Hall, 
resolve that, God helping you, you are going to seek first 
the kingdom of God. Perhaps some boys here are 
deserters; they began once before to serve Christ, and 
they deserted. Come back again, come back again to- 
day. Others have never enlisted at all: Will you not 
do it now? You are old enough to decide. And the 
grandest moment of a boy’s wae is that moment when he 
decides to 


SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


HOW TO LEARN HOW. 


I. DEALING WITH DOUBT. 








THERE is a subject which [I think we as workers 
among young men cannot afford to keep out of sight—I 
mean. the subject of ‘‘Doubt.’’ We are forced to face 
that subject. We have no choice. I would rather let it 
alone; but every day of my life I meet men who doubt, 
and I am quite sure that most of you have innumerable 
interviews every year with men who raise skeptical 
difficulties about religion. Now, it becomes a matter of 
great practical importance that we should know how to 
deal wisely with these men. Upon the whole, [ think 
these are the best men in the country. I speak of my 
own country. I speak of the universities with which I 
am familiar, and I say that the men who are perplexed— 
the men who come to you with serious and honest diffi- 
culties—are the best men. They are men of intellectual 
honesty, and cannot allow themselves to be put to rest 
by words, or phrases, or traditions, or theologies, but 
who must get to the bottom of things for themselves. 
And if I am not mistaken, Christ was very fond of these 
men. The outsiders always interested Him, and touched 
Him. The orthodox people—the Pharisees—He was 
much less interested in. He went with publicans and 
, Sinners—with people who were in revolt against the 
respectability, intellectual and religious, of the day. 
And following Him, we are entitled to give sympathetic 
Ca Can to those whom He loved and took trouble 
with. 

First, let me speak for a moment or two about the 
origin of doubt. In the first place, we are born ques- 
tioners. Look at the wonderment of a little child in its 
eyes before it can speak. The child’s great word when 
it begins to speak is, ‘‘Why?’’. Every child is full of 
every kind of questions, about every kind of thing that 
moves, and shines, and changes, in the little world in 
which it lives. That is the incipient doubt in the 


DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 239 


nature of man. Respect doubt for its origin. It is an 
inevitable thing. It is not a thing to be crushed. It is 
a part of man as God made him. Heresy is truth in the 
making, and doubt is the prelude of knowledge. 

Secondly: The world is a Sphinx. It is a vast riddle 
—an unfathomable mystery; and on every side there is 
temptation to questioning. In every leaf, in every 
cell of every leaf, there are a hundred problems. There 
are ten good years of a man’s life in investigating what 
is in the leaf, and there are five good years more in in- 
vestigating the things that are in the things that are in 
the leaf. God has planned the world to incite men to 
intellectual activity. 

Thirdly: The instrument with which we attempt to 
investigate truth is impaired. Some say it fell, and the 
glass is broken. Some say prejudice, heredity or sin, 
have spoiled its sight, and have blinded our eyes and 
deadened our ears. In any case the instruments with 
which we work upon truth, even in the strongest men, 
are feeble and inadequate to their tremendous task. 

And in the fourth place, all religious truths are doubt- 
able. There is no absolute proof for any one of them. 
Even that fundamental truth—the existence of a God— 
no man can prove by reason. The ordinary proof for the 
existence of God involves either an assumption, argu- 
ment in a circle, or a contradiction. The impression of 
God is kept up by experience; not by logic. And hence, 
when the experimental religion of a man, of a commun- 
ity, or of a nation, wanes, religion wanes—their idea of 
God grows indistinct, and that man, community or 
nation becomes infidel. Bear in mind, then, that all 
religious truths are doubtable—even those which we hold 
most strongly. 

What does this brief account of the origin of doubt 
teach us? It teaches us great intellectual humility. It 
teaches us sympathy and toleration with all men who 
venture upon the ocean of truth to find out a path 
through it for themselves. Do you sometimes feel your- 
self tainking unkind things about your fellow-students 
who have intellectual difficulty? I know how hard it is 
always to feel sympathy and toleration for them; but we 
must address ourselves to that most carefully and most 
religiously. If my brother is short-sighted, I must not 
abuse him or speak against him; I must pity him, and if 
possible try to improve his sight or to make things that 


240 DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 


he is to look at so bright that he cannot help seeing. 
But never let us think evil of men who do not see as we 
do. From the bottom of our hearts let us pity them, 
and let us take them by the hand and spend time and 
pee over them, and try to lead them to the true 
ight. 

What has been the Church’s treatment of doubt in the 
past? It has been very simple. ‘‘There is a_ heretic. 
Burn him!’’ That is all. ‘‘There is a man who. has 
gone off the road. Bring him back and torture him !’’ 
We have got past that physically; have we got past it 
morally? What does the modern Church say to a man 
who is skeptical? Not ‘‘Burn him!’ but ‘‘Brand 
him!’’ ‘‘Brana him! call him a bad name.’’ And in 
many countries at the present time a man who is 
branded as a heretic is despised, tabooed, and put out of 
religious society, much more than if he had gone wrong 
in morals. Ithink I am speaking within the facts when 
I say that a man who is unsound is looked upon in 
many communities with more suspicion and with more 
pious horror than a man who now and then gets drunk. 
‘*Burnhim!’’ ‘‘Brandhim!’’ ‘‘Excommunicate him !’’ 
That has been the Church’s treatment of doubt, and that 
is perhaps to some extent the treatment which we our- 
selves are inclined to give to the men who cannot see the 
truths of Christianity as we see them. Contrast Christ’s 
treatment of doubt. I have spoken already of His 
strange partiality for the outsiders—for the scattered 
heretics up and down the country; of the care with 
which He loved to deal with them, and of the respect in 
which He held their intellectual difficulties. _ Christ 
never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. 
Doubt is can’t believe; unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt 
is honesty ; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for 
light; unbelief is content with darkness. Loving dark- 
ness rather than light—that is what Christ attacked, and 
attacked unsparingly. But for the intellectual question- 
ing of Thomas, and Philip, and Nicodemus, and the 
many others who came to Him to have their great prob- 
lems solved, He was respectful and generous and tolerant. 

And how did He meet their doubts? The Church, as I 
have said, says, ‘‘Brand him!’’ Christ said, ‘‘Teach 
him.’’ He destroyed by fulfilling. When Thomas came 
to Him and denied His very resurrection, and stcod be- 
fore Him waiting for the scathing words and lashing for 


DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 4] 


his unbelief, they never came. Theynevercame. Christ ~ 


gave him facts—facts. No man can go around facts. 
Christ said, ‘‘Behold My hands and My feet.’’ The 
great god of science at the present time is a fact. It 
works with facts. Its cry is ‘‘Give me facts.’’ Found 
anything you like upon facts and we will believe it. 
The spirit of Christ was the scientific spirit. He 
founded His religion upon facts; and He asked all men 
to found their religion upon facts. Now, gentlemen, get 
up the facts of Christianity, and take men to the facts. 
Theologies—and I am not speaking disrespectfully of 
theology ; theology is as scientific a thing as any other 
science of favts—but theologies are human versions of 
Divine truths, and hence the varieties of the versions, and 
the inconsistencies of them. I would allow a man to 
select whichever version of thig truth he liked afterward; — 
but I would ask him to begin with no version, but go 
back to the facts and base his Christian life upon that. 
That is the great lesson of the New Testament way of 
looking at doubt—of Christ’s treatment of doubt. It is 
not ‘‘Brand him !’’—but lovingly, wisely, and tenderly to _ 
._ teach him. Faith is never opposed to reason in the New 

Testament; it is opposed to sight. You will find that a 
principle worth thinking over. Faith is never opposed to 
reason in the New Testament, but to sight. 

Well, now; with these principles in mind as to the 
origin of doubt and as Christ’s treatment of it, how are 
we ourselves to deal with our fellow-students who are in 
intellectual difficulty? In the first place, I think we 
must make all the concessions to them that we conscién- 
tiously can. When a doubter first encounters you he 
’ pours out a deluge of abuse of churches, and ministers, 
and creeds, and Christians. Nine-tenths of what he 
Says is probably true. Make concessions. Agree with 
him. It does him good to unburden himself of these 
things. He has been cherishing them for years—laying 
them up against Christians, against the Church, and 
against Christianity ; and now he is startled to find the 
first Christian with whom he has talked over the thing 
almost entirely agrees with him. We are, of course, not 
responsible for everything that is said in the name of 
Christianity; but a man does not give up medicine 
because there are quack doctors, and no man has a right 
to give up his Christianity because there are spurious or 
inconsistent Christians. Then, as I have already said, . 


242. DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 


-ereeds are human versions of Divine truths; and we do 
not ask a man to accept all the creeds, any more than 
we ask him to accept all the Christians. We ask him to 
accept Christ, and the facts about Christ, and the words 
of Christ. But you will find the battle is half won when 
you have endorsed the man’s objections, and possibly 
added a great many more to the charges which he has 
against ourselves. These men are in revolt against the 
kind of religion which we exhibit to the world— 
against the cant that is taught in the name of Christian- 
ity. And if tne men that have never seen the real thing 
—if you could show them that, they would receive it as 
eagerly as you do. They are merely i in revolt against the 
imperfections and inconsistencies of those who represent 
Christ to the world. 

Second: Beg them to set aside, by an act of will, all 
unsolved problems; such as the problem of the origin of 
evil, the problem of the Trinity, the problem of the rela- 
tion of human will and predestination, and so on—prob- 
lems which have been investigated for thousands of 
years without result—ask them to set those problems 
aside as insoluble in the meantime, just as a man who is 
studying mathematics may be asked to set aside the 
problem of squaring the circle. Let him go on with 
what can be done, and what has been done, and leave - 
out of sight the impossible. You will find that will 
relieve the skeptic’s mind of a great deal of unnecessary 
cargo that has been in his way. 

Thirdly: Talking about difficulties, as a rule, only 
aggravates them. Entire satisfaction to the intellect is 
unattainable about any of the greater problems, and if 
‘you try to get to the bottom of them by argument, there 
is no bottom there; and, therefore, you make the matter 
‘worse. But I would say what is known, and what can 
‘be honestly and philosophically and scientifically said 
about one or two of the difficulties that the doubter 
raises, just to show him that you can do it—to show 
him that you are not a fool—that you are not merely 
groping in the dark yourself, but you have found what- 
ever basis is possible. But I would not go around all 
the doctrines. I would simply do that with one or two; 
because the moment you cut off one, a hundred other 
heads will grow in its place. It would be a pity if all 
these problems could be solved. The joy of the intel- 
Jectual life would be largely gone. I would not rob a 


DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 243 


man of his problems, nor would I have another man rob 
me of my problems. They are the delight of life, and 
the whole intellectual world would be stale and unprofit- 
able if we knew everything. 

Fourthly—and this the great point: Turn away from 
the reason, and go into the man’s moral life. I don’t 
mean, go into his moral life and see if the man is living 
in conscious sin, which is the great blinder of the eyes 
—I am speaking now of honest doubt; but open a new 
door into the practical side of man’s nature. Entreat 
him not to postpone life and his life’s usefulness until 
he has settled the problems of the universe. Tell him 
those problems will never all be settled; that his life 
will be done before he has begun to settle them ; and ask 
him what he is doing with his life meantime. Charge 
him with wasting his life and his usefulness; and invite 
him to deal with the moral and practical difficulties of 
the world, and leave the intellectual difficulties as he 
goes along. To spend time upon these is proving the 
less important before the more important; and, as the 
French say, ‘‘The good is the enemy of the best.’’ It 
is a good thing to think; it is a better thing to work—it 
is a better thing to do good. And you have him there, 
you see. He can’t get beyond that. You have to tell 
him, in fact, that there are two organs of knowledge; 
the one reason, the other obedience. And now tell him, 
_as he has tried the first and found the little in it, just 
for a moment or two to join you in trying the second. 
And when he asks whom he is to obey, you tell him 
there is but One, and lead him to the great historical 
figure, who calls all men to Him: the one _ perfect life— 
the one Savior of mankind—the one Light of the world. 
Ask him to begin to obey Christ; and, doing His will, 
he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. 

That, I think, is about the only thing you can do with 
@ man: to get him into practical contact with the needs 
of the world, and to let him lose his intellectual difficul- 
ties meantime. Don’t ask, him to give them up alto- 
gether. Tell him to solve them afterward one by one if 
he can, but meantime to give his life to Christ and his 
time to the kingdom of God. And, you see, you fetch 
him completely around when you do that. You have 
taken him away from the false side of his nature, and to 
the practical and moral side*of his nature; and for the 
first time in his life, perhaps, he puts things in their 
true place. He puts his nature in the relations in which 


> ; ersten is 
a 


244 DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 


it ought to be, and he then only begins to live. And by 
obedience—by obedience—he will soon become a learner 
and pupil for himself, and Christ will teach him things, 
and he will find whatever problems are solvable gradu- 
ally solved as he goes along the path of practical duty. 
Now, let me, in closing, give a couple of instances of 
how to deal with specific points. The commonest thing 
that we hear said nowadays by young men is, ‘‘ What 
about evolution? How am I to reconcile my religion, or 
any religion, with the doctrine of evolution?’’ That 
upsets more men than perhaps anything else at the pres- 
ent hour. How would you deal with it? I would say to 
a man that Christianity is the further evolution. I 
don’t know any better definition that that. It is the 
further evolution—the higher evolution. I don’t start 
with him to attack evolution. I don’t start with him to 
defend it. I destroy by fulfilling it. I take him at his 


own terms. He says evolution is that which pushes the . 


man on from the simple to the complex, from the lower 
to the higher. Very well; that is what Christianity 
does. It pushes the man farther on. It takes him 
where nature has left him, and carries him on to heights 
which on the’ plain of nature he could never reach. 
That is evolution. ‘‘Lead me to the Rock that is higher 
than I.’’ That is evolution. Itis the development of 


the whole man in the higher directions—the drawing out. 


of his spiritual being. Show an evolutionist that, and 


you take the wind out of his sails. ‘‘I came not to | 


destroy.’’ Don’t destroy his doctrine—perhaps you 
can’t—but fulfill it. Put a larger meaning into it. 

The other instance—the next commonest perhaps—is 
the question of miracles. Jt is impossible, of course, to 
discuss that now—miracles; but that question is thrown 
at my head every second day : ‘*What do you say to a 


man when he says to you; ‘Why do you believe in mira-. 


cles!’ ’’ Isay, ‘‘Because I have seen them,’’ He says, 
‘*When?’’ I say, ‘‘Yesterday.’’ He says, ‘*‘Where?’’ 


- ‘*Down such-and-such a street I saw a man who was @ 
drunkard redeemed by the power of an unseen Christ and — 


saved from sin. That is a miracle.’’ The best apolo- 
getic for Christianity is a Christian. That is a fact 
which the man cannot get over. There are fifty other 
arguments for miracles, but none so good as that you 
have seen them. Perhaps you are one yourself. But 


take you a man and show him a miracle with his ‘Own - 
eyes. Then he will believe. 


HOW TO LEARN HOW. 


I]. PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 





BEFORE an. artist can do anything the instrument 
must be tuned. Our astronomess at this moment are pre- 
paring for an event which happens only once or twice in 
a lifetime: the total eclipse of the sun in the month of 
August. They have begun already. They are making 
preparations. At chosen stations in different parts of 
the world they are spending all the skill that sciénce can 
suggest upon the construction of their instruments; and 
up to the last moment they will be busy adjusting them ; 
and the last day will be the busiest of all, because then 
they must have the glasses and ,the mirrors polished to 
the last degree. They have to have the lenses in place 
and focussed upon this spot before the event itself takes 

lace. 

. Everything will depend upon the instruments which 
you bring to this experiment. Everything will depend . 
upon it; and, therefore, fifteen minutes will not be lost 
if we each put our instrument into the best working 
order we can. I have spoken of lenses, and that reminds 
me that the instrument which we bring to bear upon 
truth is a compound thing. It consists of many parts. 

Trvth is not a product of the intellect alone; it is a 
product of the whole nature. The body is engaged in it, 

and the mind, and the soul. 

The body is engaged in it. Of course, a man who has 
his body run down, or who is dyspeptic, or melancholy, 
sees everything black, and disordered, and untrue. But 
I am not going to dwell upon that. Most of you seem 
in pretty fair working order so far as. your bodies are 
concerned; only it is well to remember that we are to 
give our bodies a living sacrifice—not a half-dead sacri- 
fice, as some people seem to imagine. There is no virtue 
in emaciation. I don’t know if you have any tendency 


246 — DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES... 


‘in that direction in America, but certainly we are in 
danger of dropping into it now and then in England, 
and it is just as well to bear in mind our part of the 


lens—a very compound and delicate lens—with which we 


have to take in truth. 

Then comes a very important part; the intellect— 
which is one of the most useful servants of truth; and I 
need not tell you as students, that the intellect will have 


a great deal to do with your reception of truth. I was - 


told that it was said at these conferences last year, that 
aman must crucify his intellect. I venture to contradict 
the gentleman who made that statement. I am quite 
sure no such statement could ever have been made in 
your hearing—that we were to crucify our intellects. 
We can make no progress without the full use of all the 
intellectual powers that God has endowed us with. 

But more important than either of these is the moral 
nature—the moral and spiritual nature. Some of you 
remember a sermon of Robertson of Brighton, entitled 
‘‘Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge.”’?’ A 
very startling title !—‘‘Obedience the Organ of Spiritual 
Knowledge.’’ The Pharisees asked about Christ: ‘‘How 
knoweth this man letters, never having learned?’’ , How 
knoweth this man, never having learned? The organ of 
knowledge is not nearly so much mind, as the organ that 


Christ used, namely, obedience ; and that was the organ 


which He Himself insisted upon when He said: ‘‘He 


that willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine. 


whether it be of God.’’ You have all noticed, of course, 
that the words in the original are: ‘‘If any man will 
do His will, he shall know the doctrine.’’ It doesn’t 
read, ‘‘If any do His will,’’ which no man can do per- 
fectly ; but if a man be simply willing to do His will— 
if he has an absolutely undivided mind about it—that 
man will know what truth is and know what falsehood 
is; a stranger will he notfollow. And that is by far the 
best source of spiritual knowlege on every account— 
obedience to God—absolute sincerity and loyalty in fol- 
lewing Christ. ‘‘If any man do His will he shall 
know’’—a very remarkable association of knowledge, a 


_. thing whch is usually considered quite intellectual, with 


obedience which is moral and spiritual. 

But even although we use all these three different 
parts of the ‘instrument, we have not at all got at the 
complete method of learning. There is a little prelimin- 


4 
ON ae 


DRUMMOND S ADDRESSES. 247 


ary that the astronomer has to do before he can make his 
observation. He has to take the cap off his telescope. 

Many a man thinks he is looking at truth when he is 
only looking at the cap. Many a time I have looked 
down my microscope, and thought I was looking at the 
diatom for which I had long been searching, and found I 
had simply been looking at a speck of dust upon the lens 
itself. Many a man thinks he is looking at truth when 
he is only looking at the spectacles he has put on to see 
it with. He is looking at his own spectacles. Now, the 
common spectacles that a man puts on—I suppose the 
creed in which he has been brought up—if a man looks 
at that, let him remember that he is not looking at 
truth ; he is looking at his own spectacles. There is no 
more important lesson that we have to carry with us 
than that truth is not to be found in what I have been 
taught. That is not truth. Truth is not what I have 
been taught. If it were so, that would apply to the 
Mormon, it would apply to the Brahman it would apply to 
the Buddhist. Truth would be to everybody just what 
he had been taught. Therefore let us dismiss from our 
minds the predisposition to regard that which we have 
been brought up in as being necessarily the truth. I 
must say it is very hard to shake one’s self free altogether 
from that. I suppose it is impossible. 

But you see the reasonableness of giving up that as: 
your view of truth when you come to apply it all 
around. If that were the definition of truth, truth 
would be just what one’s parents were—it would be a. 
thing of hereditary transmission, and not a thing abso- 
lute in itself. Now, let me venture to ask you to take — 
that cap off. Take that cap off now, and make up your 
minds you are going to look at truth naked—in its real- 
ity as it is, not as it is reflected through other minds, or 
through any theology, however venerable. 

Then there is one thing I think we must be careful 
about, and that is beside having the cap off, and having 
all the lenses clean and in position—to have the instru- 
ment rightly focussed. Everything may be right, and 
yet when you go and look at the object, you see things 
altogether falsely. You see things not only blurred, but 
you see things out of proportion. And there is nothing 
more important we ‘have to bear in mind in running our 
eye over successive theological truths, or religious truths, 
than that there is a proportion in those truths, and that 


248 DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 


we must see them in their proportion, or we see them 
falsely. A man may take a dollar or a half-dollar and : 
hold it to his eye so closely that he will hide the sun 
from him. Or he may so focus his telescope that a fly 
or a bowlder may be as large as amountain. A man may 
hold a certain doctrine, very intensely—a doctrine 
which has been looming upon his horizon for the last 
six months, let us say, and which has thrown everything 
else out of proportion, it has become so big itself. Now 
let us beware of distortion in the arrangement of the 
religious truths which we hold. It is almost impossible 
to get things in their true proportion and symmetry, 
but this is the thing we must be constantly aiming at. 
We are told in the Bible to ‘‘add to your faith virtue, 
and to virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge balance,’’ as 
the word literally means—balance. It is a word taken 
from the orchestra, where all the parts—the sopranos, 
the basses, the altos, and the tenors, and all the rest of 
them—must be regulated. If you have too much of the 
bass, or too much of the soprano, there is want of har- 
mony. That is what I mean by the want of proper 
focus—by the want of proper balance—in the truths 
which we all hold. It will never do to exaggerate one 
fruth at the expense of another, and a truth may be 
turned into a falsehood very, very easily, by simply 
being either too much enlarged or too much diminished. 
I once heard of some blind nen who were taken to see a 
menagerie. They had gone around the animals, and 
four of them were allowed to touch an elephant as they 
went past. They were discussing afterward what kind 
of a creature the elephant was. One man, who had 
touched its tail, said the elephant was like a rope. 
Another of the blind men, who had touched his hind 
limb,. said, ‘‘No such thing! the elephant is like the 
trunk of a tree.’’ Another, who had felt its sides, said, 
‘‘That is all._rubbish. An elephant is a thing like a 
wall.’’ And the fourth, who had felt its ear, said that 
an elephant was like none of those things; it was like a 
leather bag.. Now, men look at truth at different bits of 
it, and they see different things, of course, and they are 
very apt to imagine that the thing which they have seen | 
is the whole affair—the whole thing. In reality, we can 
only see a very little bit at a time; and we must, I 
think, learn to believe that other men: can see bits of: 
truth as well as ourselves. Your views are just what 


DRUMMOND’ 3 ADDRESSES. , 249 


you see with your own eyes; and my views are just what 
I see; and what I see depends on just where I stand, and 
what you see depends on just where you stand; and 
truth is very much bigger than an elephant, and we are 
very much blinder than any of those blind men as we 
come to look at it. 

Christ has made us aware that it is quite possible for 
a man to have ears and hear nothing, and to have eyes 
and see not. One of the disciples saw a great deal of 
Christ, and he never knew Him. ‘‘Have I been so long 
time with you, Philip, and yet hast thou not known 
Me?’’ ‘‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father 
also.’’ Philip had nev>2r seen Him. He had been look- 
ing at his own spectacles, perhaps, or at something else, 
and had never seen Him. If the instrument had been in 
order, he would have seen Christ. And I would just 
add this one thing more: the test of value of the differ- 
ent verities of truth depends upon one thing: whether 
they have or have not a sanctifying power. That is 
another remarkable associaton in the mind of Christ—of 
sanctification with truth—thinking and holiness—not to 
be found in any of the sciences or in any of the philoso- 
phies. It is peculiar to the Bible. Christ said ‘‘Sanctify 
them through Thy truth. Thy word is truth.’’ Now, 
the value of any question—the value of any theological 
question—depends upon whether it has a sanctifying 
influence. if it has not, don’t bother about it. Don’t 
let it disturb your minds until you have exhausted all 
truths that have sanctification within them. If a truth 
makes a man a better man, then let him focus his 
instrument upon it and get all the acquaintance with it 
he can. If it is the profane babbling of science, falsely 
so called, or anything that has injurious effect upon the 
moral and spiritual nature of man, it is better let alone. 
And above all, let us remember to hold the truth in love. 
That is the most sanctifying influence of all. And if 
we can carry away the mere lessons of toleration, and 
leave behind us our censoriousness, and criticalness, and 
harsh judgments upon one another, an excommunicating 
of everybody except those who think exactly as we do, 
the time we shall spend ite will not be the least useful 
parts of our lives. 


WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN ? 


YOUNG men are learning to respect more, perhaps, than 
ever young men have done, the word ‘‘Christian.’’ I 
have seen the time when it was synonymous with cant 
and unreality and strained feeling and sanctimonious- 
ness. But although that day is not quite passed yet, it 
it is passing. I heard this definition the other day of a 
Christian man by a cynic—‘‘A Christian man is a man 
whose great aim in life is a selfish desire to save his 
own soul, who, in order to do that, goes regularly to 
church, and whose supreme hope is to get to Heaven 
when he dies.’’ This reminds one of Professor Huxley’s 
examination paper in which the question was put— 
‘*What is a lobster?’’ One student replied that a lobster 
was a red fish, which moves backward. The examiner 
noted that this was a very good answer, but for three 
things. In the first place a lobster was not a fish; sec- 
ond it was not red; and third it did not move backward. 
If there is anything that a Christian is not, it is one 
who has a selfish desire to save his own soul. The one 
thing which Christianity tries to extirpate from a man’s 
nature is selfishness, even though it be the losing of his 
own soul. 

Christianity, as we understand it from Christ, appeals 
to the generous side of a young man’s nature, and not to 
the selfish side. In the new version of the New Testa- 
ment the word ‘‘soul’’ is always translated in this con- 
nection by the word ‘‘life.’’. That marks a revolution in 
the popular theology, and it will make a revolution in 
every Young Man’s Christian Association in the country 
where it comes to be seen that a man’s Christianity does 
not consist in merely saving his own soul, but in sancti- 
fying and purifying the lives of his fellow-men. We are 
told in the New Testament that Christianity is leaven, 
and ‘‘leaven’’ comes from the same root-word as lever, 
meaning that which raises up, which eleyates; and a 
Christian young man is a man who raises up or elevates 


%,: 


DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 251 


the lives of those round about him. We are also told 
that Christianity is salt, and salt is that which saves 
from corruption. What is it that saves the life of the 
world from being utterly rotten, but the Christian ele- 
ments that are in it? Matthew Arnold has said, ‘‘Show 
me ten square miles in any part of the world outside 
Christianity where the life of man and the purity of 
woman are safe, and I will give Christianity up.’’ In 
no part of the world is there any such ten square miles 
outside Christianity. Christian men are the salt of the 
earth in the most literal sense. They, and they alone, 
keep the world from utter destruction. 

I want to say a word here about the Young Men’s 
Christian Associations. Many have criticised them. - 
They have been the target for a great deal of abuse. 
Many of the best young men have sneered at them, and 
turned up their noses at them, and denounced them. I 
am speaking with absolute sympathy and respect, and 
even enthusiasm, for Young Men’s Christian Associa- 
tions. But I will turn for one instant upon those men 
who turn against them, and tell them that it is not 
breadth that leads them to do that, but what one might 
call the narrowness of breadth—that breadth which 
denounces intolerance, and which is itself too intolerant 
to tolerate intolerance. And, as some one says, it is eas- 
ier to criticise the best thing superbly than to do the 
smallest thing indifferently. 

It is very easy to criticise the methods and aims and 
men of the Young Men’s Christian Associations. If, 
instead of looking on and criticising those who know a 
thing or two, those who think they are wiser, and that 
they have the whole truth, would throw themselves in 
among others and back them and try to work alongside 
of them, they would get perhaps their breadth tempered 
by earnestness and by zeal, because the narrow man has 
much to contribute to the Christian cause, perhaps more 
than the broad man. But it needs all kinds of people to 
make a world; it needs all kinds of people to make a 
church, and every type of *young men a Christian Asso- 
ciation ; and the greatest mistake of all is to have every 
man stamped in the same stamp, so that 1f you met him 
in a railway train one hundred miles off, you would | 
know him asa Y. M. C. A. man. I would like to find 
many who would not wear the badge so pronouncedly, 
that every one should know them at a glance. 


252 DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 


There is only one great character in the world that can 
really draw out all that is best in man. He is so far 
above all others in influencing men for good that he 
stands alone. That man was the founder of Christian- 
ity. To be a Christian man is to have that character of 
our ideal in life, to live under its influence, to do what 
He would wish us to do, to live the kind of life He 
would have lived in our house, and had He our day’s 
routine to go through. It would not, perhaps, alter the 
forms of our life, but it would alter the spirit and aims 
and motives of our life, and the Christian man is he 
who in that sense lives under the influence of Jesus 
Christ. | 

Now, there is nothing that a young man wants for his ~* 
ideal that is not found in Christ. You would be sur- 
prised when you come to know who Christ is, if you 
have not thought much about it, to find how He will fit 
in with all human needs, and call out all that is best in 
man. The highest and manliest character that ever 
lived was Christ. One incident I often think of and 
wonder. You remember, when He hung upon the cross, 
there was handed up to Him a vessel containing a stupe- 
fying drug, supplied by a kind society of ladies in Jeru- 
salem, who always sent it to criminals when being exe- 
cuted. And that stupefying drug was handed up to 
Christ’s lips. And we read, ‘‘When he tasted thereof 
He would not drink.’’ I have always thought that one 
of the most heroic actions I have ever read of. But that 
was only one very small side of Christ’s nature. He can 
be everything that a man wants. Paul tells us that if 
we live in Christ we are changed into His image. All | 
that a man has to do, then, to be like Christ, is simply 
to live in friendship with Christ, and the character 
follows. 

But it is only one of the aims of Christianity to make 
the best men. The next thing Christ wants to do is to 
make the best world. And He tries to make the best 
world by setting the best men loose upon the world to 
influence it and reflect Him upon it. In 1874 a religious 
movement began in Edinburgh University among the 
students themselves, that has since spread to some of the 
best academic institutions in America. The students 
have a hall, and there they meet on Sundays, or occa- 
siona)ly on week-days, to hear addresses from their pro- 
' fessors, or from outside eminent men, on Christian 


- DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 253 


topics. There is no committee; there are no rules; there 
are no reports. Every meeting is held strictly in 
private, and any attempt to pose before the world is 
sternly discouraged. No paragraphs are put into the 
journals; no addresses are reported. The meetings are 
private, quiet, earnest, and whatsoever student likes 
may attend them. Thatisall. It is not an organization — 
in the ordinary sense, it is a ‘‘leaven.’’ In all the 
schools it is the best men who take most part in the 
movement, and among the schools it is the medical side 
which furnishes the greatest number of students to the 
meetings. Some of the most zealous have taken high 
honors in their examinations, and some have been in the 
first class of university athletes. It is not a movement 
that has laid hold of weak or worthless students whom 
nobody respects, but one that is maintained by the best 
men in every department. The first benefit is to the 
students themselves. Take Edinburgh, with about 4,000 
students drawn from all parts of the world, and living in 
rooms with no one caring for them. Taken away from 
the moral support of their previous surroundings, they 
went to the bad in hundreds. It is now found that 
through this movement they work better, and that a 
greater percentage pass honorably through the university 
_ portals into life. The religious meetings, it is to be ob- 
served, are never allowed to interfere with the work of 
the students. The second result is to be seen in what 
are called university settlements. A few men will band 
themselves together and rent a house in the lower parts 
of the city and live there. They do no preaching, no 
formal evangelization work; but they help the sick and 
they arrange smoking concerts, and contribute to the 
amusement of their neighbors. They simply live with 
the people, and trust that their example will produce a 
good effect. Three years ago they printed and dis- 
tributed among themselves the followng ‘‘Programme of 
Christianity :’’—‘‘To bind up the broken-hearted, to give 
liberty to the captives, to comfort all that mourn, to give 
beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of © 
_ heaviness.’’ I suppose there are few of us with broken 
hearts, but there are other people in the world besides 
ourselves, and underneath all the gayety of the city 
there is not a street in which there are not men and 
women with broken hearts. Who is to help these 
people? No one can lift them up in any way except 


204 DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 


those who are living the life of Christ, and it is their 
privilege and business to bind up the broken-hearted. 

I want to urge the claims of the Christian ministry on 
the strength and talent of our youth. I find a singular 
want of men in the Christian ministry, and I think it 
would be at least worth while for some of you to look 
around, to look at the men who are not filling the 
churches, to look at the needs of the crowds who throng 
the streets, and see if you could do better with your life 
than throw yourself into that work. The advantage of 
the ministry is that a man’s whole life can be thrown 
into the carrying out of that programme without any 
deduction. Another advantage of the ministry is that it 
is so poorly paid that a man is not tempted to cut a dash 
and shine in the world, but can be meek and lowly in 
heart, like his Master. It is enough for a servant to be 
like his master, and there is a great attraction in seeking 
obscurity, even isolation, if one can be following the 
highest idea. 

With regard to the question, how you shall begin the 
Christian life, let me remind you that theology is the 
most abstruse thing in the world, but that practical reli- 
gion is the simplest thing. If any of you want to know 
how to begin to be a Christian, all I can say is that you 
should begin to do the next thing you find to be done as 
Christ would have done it. If you follow Christ the 
‘fold man’’ will die of atrophy, and the ‘‘new man’’ 
will grow day by day under His abiding friendship. 


THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 


I WILL give a note or two, pretty much by way of 
refreshing the memory about the Bible and how Ms look 
at it. 

First: The Bible came out of religion, not peloton out of 
the Bible. The Bible is a product of religion, not a cause 
of it. The war literature of America, which culmin- 
ated, I suppose, in the publication of President Grant’s 
life, came out of the war; the war did not come out of 
the literature. And so in the distant past, there flowed 
among the nations of heathendom a small warm stream, 
like the Gulf Stream in the cold Atlantic—a small 
stream of religion; and now and then at intervals, men, 
carried along by this stream, uttered themselves in 
words. The historical books came out of facts; the 
devotional books came out of experiences; the letters 
came out of circumstances; and the Gospels came out of 
all three. ‘That is where the Bible came from. It came 
out of religion; religion did not come out of the Bible. 
You see the difference. The religion is not, then, in the 
writing alone ; but in those facts, experiences, circum- 
stances, in the history and development of a_ people led 
and taught by God. And it is not the words that are 
inspired so much as the men. 

Secondly : These men were authors; they were not pens. 
Their individuality comes out on every page they wrote. 
They were different in mental and literary style; in 
insight; and even the same writer differs at different 
times. II. Thessalonians, for example, is considerably 
beneath the level of Romans, and III. John is beneath 
the level of I. John. A man is not always at his best. 
These writers did not know they were writing a Bible. 

Third: The Bible is not a Book; it is a library. It con- 
sists of sixty-six books. It is a great convenience, but 
in some respects a great misfortune, that these books 
have always been bound up together and given out as 
one book to the world, when they are not; because that 


me 


256 DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 


ne led to endless mistakes in theology and in practical 
ife. 

Fourth: These books, which make up this library, 
written at intervals of hundreds of years, were collected 
after the last of the writers was dead—long after—by 
-human hands. Where were the books? Take the New 
Testament. There were four lives of Christ. One was 
in Rome; one was in Southern Italy ; one was in Pales- 
tine; one in Asia Minor. There were twenty-one 
letters. Five were in Greece, and Macedonia; five in 
Asia; one in Rome. The rest were in. the pockets of 
private individuals. Theophilus had acts. They were 
collected undesignedly. For example, the letter to the 
Galatians was written to the Church in Galatia. Some- 
body would make acopy or two, and put it into the 
hands of the members of the different churches, and they . 
would find their way not only to the churches in Gala- 
tia, but after an interval to nearly all the churches. In 
those days the Christians scattered up and down through 
the world, exchanged copies of those letters, very much 
as geologists up and down the world exchange specimens 
of minerals at the present time, or entomologists ex- 
change specimens of butterflies. And after a long time 
a number of the books began to be pretty well known. 
In the third century the New Testament consisted of the 
following books: the four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters 
of Paul, I. John, I. Peter; and in addition, the: Epistles 
of Barnabas and Hermas. This was not called the New 
Testament, but the Christian Library. Then these last 
books were discarded. They ceased to be regarded as 
upon the same level as the others. Inthe fourth century 
the canon was closed—that is to say, a list was made up 
of the books which were to be regarded as canonical. 
And then long after that they were stitched together and 
made up into one book—hundreds of years after that. 
Who made up the complete list? It was never formally 
made up. The bishops of the different churches would 
draw up a list each of the books that they thought ought 
to be put into this Testament: The churches also would 
give their opinion. Sometimes councils would, meet and 
talk it over—discuss it. Scholars like Jerome would 
investigate the authenticity of the different documents, 
and there came to be a general consensus of the churches 
on the matter. But no formal closing of the canon was 
ever attempted. | 


DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 257 


And lastly: All religions have their sacred books, just 
as the Christians have theirs. Why is it necessary to 
remind ourselves of that? If you ask a man why he 
believes such and such a thing, he will tell you, Because 
it is in the Bible. If you ask him, ‘‘How do you know 
the Bible is true?’’ he will probably reply, ‘‘Because it 
says so.’’ Now, let that man remember that the sacred 
books of all the other religions make the same claim ; 
and while it is quite enough among ourselves to talk 
about a thing being true because it is in the Bible, we 
come in contact with outsiders, and we have to meet the 
skepticism of the day. We must go far deeper than 
that. The religious books of the other religions claim to 
be far more divine in their origin than do ours. For ex- 
ample, the Mohammedans claim for the Koran—a large 
section of them, at least—that it was uncreated, and 
that it lay before the throne of God from the beginning 
of time. They claim it was put in the hands of the 
angel, Gabriel, who brought it down to Mohammed, and 
dictated it to him, and allowed him at long intervals to 
have a look at the original book itself—bound with silk 
and studded with precious stones. That is a claim of 
much higher Divinity than we claim for our book; and 
if we simply have to rely upon the Bible’s testimony to 
its own verity, it is for the same reason the Moham- 
medan would have you believe his book, and the Hindu 
would have you put your trust in the Vedas.. That is 
why thorough Bible stady is of such importance. We 
can get to the bottom of truth in itself, and be able to 
give a reason for the faith that is in us. 

Now may I give you, before I stop, just a couple of 
examples of how the Bible came out of religion, and not 
religion out of the Bible? Take one of the letters. Just 
see how it came out of the circumstances of the time. 
The first of the letters that was written will do very well 
as an example. It is the ist Epistle to the Thessa- 
lonians. In the year 52 Paul went to Europe. He 
spent three Sundays in Thessalonica, created a great dis- 
turbance by his preaching, and a riot sprang up, and his 
life was in danger. He was smuggled out of the city at 
night—not, however, before having founded a small 
church. He was unable to go back to Thessalonica, 
although he tried it two or three times; but he wrote a 
letter. That is the first letter to the Thessalonians. 
You see how it sprang out of the circumstances of the 


258 ,_ DRUMMOND S ADDRESSES. 


time. Take a second example. Let us take one of the 
lives of Christ. Suppose you take the life recorded by 
Mark. Now, from internal evidences you can make out 
quite clearly how it was written, by whom it was writ- 
ten, and to whom it was written. You understand at 
once it was written to a Roman public. If I were writ- 
ing a letter to a red Indian I would make it very differ- 
ent from a letter I would write to a European. Now, 
Mark puts in a number of points which he would not if 
he had been writing to Greeks. For example, Mark 
almost never quotes prophecy. The Romans did not 
know anything about prophecy. Then, he gives little 
explanation of Jewish customs. When I was writing 
home I had to give some little explanations of American 
customs—for example, Commencement Day. When 
Mark writes to Rome about things happening farther 
_ East, he gives elaborate explanations. Again, Mark is 
fond of Latin words—writing the Latins, who could 
understand them. He talks about ‘‘centurion,’’ ‘‘preto- 
rium,’’ and others. Then, he always turns Jewish 
money into Roman money, just as I should say a book, 
if I were writing to Europe about it, cost two shillings, 
instead of fifty cents. Mark, for example, says, ‘‘two 
mites, which make a codrantes.’’ He refers to the coins 
which the Romans knew. In these ways we find out 
that the Bible came out of the circumstances and the 
places and the times in which it was written. Then if 
we will we can learn where Mark got his information, 
to a large extent. It is an extremely interesting study. 
I should like to refer to Gocet’s ‘‘New Testament 


Studies,’’ where you will get this worked out. Let me 


just indicate to you how these sources of information are 
arrived at—the principal sources of information. There 
are @ number of graphic touches in the book which indi- 
cate an eye-witness. Mark himself could\not have been 
the eyewitness; and yet there are a number of graphic 
touches which show that he got his account from an eye- 
witness. You will find them, for example, in Mark iv. 
88; x. 50; vi. 31; vii. 34. You will find also graphic 
touches indicating an ear-witness—as if the voice lin- 
gered in the mind of the writer. For example, the 
retention of Aramaic in y. 41; and in vii. 34—‘‘ Talitha 
cumi; Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.’’ He retained the 
Aramaic words Christ said, as I would say in Scotland, 
‘‘My wee lassie, risa up.’’ The very words lingered in 


=o ae 
7 


DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 259 


his ear, and he put them in the original. Then there 
are occasional phrases indication the moral impression 
produced—y. 15; x. 24; x. 82. Now, Mark himself was 
not either the eye-witness or ear-witness. There is 
internal evidence that he got his information from Peter. 
We know very well that Mark was an intimate friend of 
Peter’s. When Peter came to Mark’s house in Jerusa- 
lem, after he got out of prison, the very servant knew 
his voice, so that he must have been well known in the 
house. Therefore he was a friend of Mark’s. The color- 
ing and notes seem to be derived from Peter. There isa 
sense of wonder and admiration which you find all 
through the book, very like Peter’s way of looking at 
things—i. 27; i. 33; 1. 45; 11. 12; v. 42; anda great many 
others. But, still more interesting, Mark quotes the 
words, ‘‘Get thee behind Me, Satan,’’ which were said 
to Peter’s shame, but he omits the preceding words said 
to his honor—‘‘Thou art Peter. On this rock,’’ and so 
on. Peter had learned to be humble when he was tell- 
ing Mark about it. Compare Mark viii. 27-33, with 
Matthew’s account—vxi. 13-33. Mark also omits the 
fine achievement of Peter—walking on the lake. When 
Peter was talking to Mark, he never said anything 
about it. Compare vi. 50 with Matthew’s account—xiv. 
28. And Mark alone records the two warnings given to 
Peter by the two cock-crowings, making his fall the more 
inexcusable. See Mark xiv. 80; also the 68th verse and 
the 72d. Peter did not write the book; we know that, 
because Peter’s style is entirely different. None of the 
four Gospels have the names of the writers attached to 
them. We have had to find all these things out; but 
Mark’s Gospel is obviously made up of notes from 
Peter’s evangelistic addresses. 

So we see from these simple examples how human a 
book the Bible is, and how the Divinity in it has — 
worked through human means. The Bible, in fact, has 
come out of religion; not religion out of the Bible. 


1 
i 


A TALK ON BOOKS. 





No book is worth anything which is not worth much, nor is it service- 
able until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and 
marked so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, asa soldier can 
seize the weapons he needs in any armory, or a housewife bring the piece 
she needs from her store. JOHN RUSKIN. 


Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A 
message to us from the dead—from human souls whom we never saw, 
who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away, and yet these, or those 
little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, comfort us, open their 
hearts to us as brothers. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the 
more enjoyable. A. BRONSON ALCOTT. 


My object at this time is to give encouragement and 
help to the ‘‘duffers,’’ the class of ‘‘hopeful duffers.’’ 
Brilliant students have every help, but second-class 
students are sometimes neglected and disheartened. I 
have great sympathy ‘‘with the duffers,’’ because I was 
only.a second-rate student myself. The subject of my 
talk with you is 


BOOKS. 


A gentleman in Scotland who has an excellent library 
has placed on one side of the room his heavy somber 
tomes, and over those shelves the form of an owl. On 
the other side of the room are arranged the lighter books, 
and over these is the figure of a bird known in Scotland 
as ‘‘the dipper.’’ This is a most sensible division. The 
**owl books’’ are to be mastered, the great books, such as 


» Gibbon’s ‘‘Rome,’’ Butler’s ‘‘ Analogy,’’ Dorner’s ‘‘ Per- 


son of Christ,’’ and text-books of philosophy and 
science. Every student should master one or two, at 
least, of such ‘‘owl books,’’ to exercise his faculties, and 
give him concentrativeness. I do not intend to linger 


at this side of the library, but will cross over to the ‘‘dipper — 


books,’’ which are for occasional reading—for stimulus, 
for guidance, recreation. It will be 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 
When I was a student in lodgings I began to form a 


DRUMMOND’S ADDRESSES. 267 


library, which I arranged along the mantelshelf of my 
room. It did not contain many books; but it held as 
many as some students could afford to purchase, and if 
wisely chosen, as many as one could well use. My first 
purchase was a volume of extracts from Ruskin’s works, 
which then in their complete form were very costly. 
Ruskin taught me to use my eyes. Men are born blind 
as bats or kittens, and it is long before men’s eyes are 
opened ; some men never learn to see as long as they 
live. I often wondered, if there was a Creator, why He 
had not made the world more beautiful. Would not 


crimson and scarlet colors have been far richer than - 


green and browns? But Ruskin taught me to see the 
world as it is, and it soon became a new world to me, 
full of charm and loveliness. Now I can linger beside a 
plowed field and revel in the affluence of color and 
shade which are to be seen in the newly-turned furrows, 
and I gaze in wonder at the liquid amber of the two feet 
of air above the brown earth. Now the colors and 
shades of the woods are a delight, and at every turn my 
eyes are surprised at fresh charms. The rock which I 
had supposed to be naked I saw clothed with lichens— 
patches of color—marvelous organisms, frail as the ash 
of a cigar, thin as brown. paper, yet growing and fructi- 
fying in spite of wind and rain, of scorching sun and 
biting frost. I owe much to Ruskin for teaching me to 
see. Next on my mantelshelf was Emerson. i discov- 
ered Emerson for myself. When I asked what Emerson 
was, one authority pronounced him a great man; 
another as confidently wrote him down a humbug. Sol 
silently stuck to Emerson. Carlyle I could not read. 
After wading through a page of Carlyle I felt as if I had 
been whipped. Carlyle scolded too much for my taste 
and he seemed to me a great man gone delirious. But 
in Emerson I found what I would fain have sought in 
Carlyle; and, moreover, I was soothed and _ helped. 
Emerson taught me to see with the mind. 

Next on my shelf came two or three volumes of George 
Eliot’s works from which I gained some knowledge and 
a further insight into many philosophical and social 
questions. But my chief debt to George Eliot at that 
time was that she introduced me to pleasant characters— 
nice people—and especially to one imaginary young lady 
whom I was in love with one whole winter, and it 
diverted my mind in solitude. A good novel is a valu- 


262 DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 


able acquisition, and it supplies companionship of a 
pleasant kind. 

Among my small residue of books I must name Chan- 
nings’s works. Before I read Channing I doubted 
whether there was a God; at least I would rather have 
believed that there were no God. After becoming 
acquainted with Channing I could believe there was a 
God, and I was glad to believe in Him, for I felt drawn 
to the good and gracious Sovereign of all things. Still, 
Il needed further what I found in F. W. Robertson, the 
British officer in the pulpit—bravest, truest of men— 
who dared to speak what he believed at all hazards. 
From Robertson I learned that God is human; that we 
may have fellowship with Him, because He sympa- 
thizes with us. | 

One day as I was looking over my mantelshelf library, it 
suddenly struck me that all these authors of mine were 
heretics—these were dangerous books. Undesignedly I 
had found stimulus and help from teachers who were 
not credited by orthodoxy. And I have since found 
that much of the: good to be got from books is to be 
gained from authors often classed as dangerous, for these 
provoke inquiry, and exercise one’s powers. Toward the 
end of my shelf I had one or two humorous works; chief 
among them all being Mark Twain. His humor is pecul- 
iar; broad exaggeration, a sly simplicity, comical 
situations, and surprising turns of expressions; but to 
me it has been a genuine fundof humor. The humorous 
side of a student’s nature needs to be considered, and 
where it is undeveloped, it should be cultivated. I have 
known many instances of good students who seemed to 
have no sense of humor. 

I will not recommend any of my favorite books to 
another; they have done me good, but they might not 
suit another man. Every man must discover his own 
books; but when he has found what fits in with his 
tastes, what stimulates him to thought, what supplies a 
want in his nature, and exalts him in conception and 
feelings, that is the book for the student, be what it 
may. This brings me to speak of. 


THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 


To fall in love with a good book is one of the greatest 
events that can befall us. It is to have a new influence 
pouring itself into our life, a new teacher to inspire and 


DRUMMOND'S ADDRESSES. 263 


refine us, a new friend to be by our side always, who, 
when life grows narrow and weary, will take us into his 
wider and calmer and higher world. Whether it be 
biography introducing us to some humble life made great 
by duty done; or history, opening vistas into the move- 
ments and destinies of nations that have passed away ; or 
poetry making music of all the common things around 
us, and filling the fields, and the skies, and the work of 
the city and the cottage with eternal meanings—whether 
it be these, or story books, or religious books, or science, 
no one can become the friend even of one good book 
without being made wiser and better. Do not think I 
am going to recommend any such book to you. The 
beauty of a friend is that we discover him. And we 
must each taste the books that are accessible to us for 
ourselves. Do not be disheartened at first if you like 
none of them. That is possibly their fault, not yours. 
But search and search till you find what you like. In 
amazingly cheap form—for a few pence indeed—almost 
all the best books are now to be had; and I think every- 
- one owes it as a sacred duty to his mind to start a little 
library of his own. How much do we not do for our 
bodies? How much thought and money do they not cost 
us? And shall we not think a little, and pay a little, for 
the clothing and adorning of the imperishable mind? 
This private library may begin, perhaps, with a single 
volume, and grow at the rate of one or two a year; but 
these well-chosen and well-mastered, will become such a 
fountain of strength and wisdom that each shall be eager 
to add to his store. A dozen books accumulated in this 
way may be better than a whole library. Do not be dis- 
tressed if you do not like time-honored books, or 
classical works, or recommended. books. Choose for 
yourself; trust yourself; plant yourself on your own in- 
stincts; that which is natural for us, that which nour- 
ishes us, and gives us appetite, is that which is right 
for us. We have all different minds, and we are all at 
different stages of growth. Some other day we may find 
food in the recommended book, though we should possi- 
bly starve on it to-day. The mind develops and changes, 
and the favorites of this year, also, may one day cease 
to interest us. Nothing better indeed can happen to us 
than to lose interest in a book we have often read; for 
it means that it has done its work upon us, and brought 
us up to its level, and taught us all it had to teach. 


fHE ROSEBUD EDITION OF SELEGTED WORKS 


BY FAMOUS AUTHORS. 
Bound in Cloth (Linen Finish Style) narrow 16mo; Size of book 4 x 6 in, 


This edition of selected novels is a collection of the choicest gems of 
fiction by world renowned authors. It includes in its list of titles nearly 
all of the famous books which have recently attained wide celebrity, as 
well as many of the entrancing romances of the old school of authors. 
Bound in handsome cloth, stamped on side and back. 


PRICE 40 CENTS EACH. 
CATALOGUE: 


1 Black Beauty : ; ° . Anna Sewell 
2 Treasure Island A ° ! Robert Louis Stevenson _ 
3 A Study in Scarlet ° e ° A. Conan Doyle 
4 Whe Sign of the Four . e « A. Conan Doyle 
5 A Case of Identity ° ° o: A. Conan Doyle 
G Beyond the City e - A. Conan Doyle 
Y Ships that Pass in the Nig ht A Beatrice Harraden 
8 At the Green Dragon e ° Beatrice Harraden 
9 Lady Grace . ° ° Mrs. Henry Wood 
10 The Six Gray Powders’ ° e Mrs. Henry Wood 
11 Wedded and Parted ° e ° e+) Bertha, Clay 
12 The Shadow of a Sin ° ° ° Bertha Clay 
13 The Squire’s Darling . . - ; Bertha Clay 
14 A Wicked Girl ° . ° ° mie Cecil Hay 
15 The O@ctoroon le - Miss M. E. Braddon 
16 Dodo; a Detail of the Day ° ° E F, Benson 
17 Charlotte Wemple. « Mrs. Rowson 
18 The Hired Baby (& other stories) “Marie ‘Corelli, A.C. Doyle.ete. 
19 A Rogue’s Life e ° ° e Wilkie Collins 
20 Whe Yellow WMiask .-  . ° ° Wilkie Collins 
21 Miy Lady’s MWomey. ° Wilkie Collins 
22 Mirs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures - Douglas Jerrold 
23 Forging the Fetters ° e e Mrs. Alexander 
24 A Yellow Aster ‘ . Iota 
25 Miss Wilme and —. Author of A Yellow Aster” 
26 Cricket on the Hearth 4 ° « » Charles Dickens 
27 Back to the Old Home. . Mary Cecil Hay 
28 The Bag of Diamonds . . "George Manville Fenn 
29 Called Back . ° ° Hugh Conway 
30 Maid, Wife or Widow? . ° « Mrs. Alexander 
31 deala . > ° ° e Sarah Grand 
$2 Singularly Deluded ‘ ’ . ° Sarah Grand 
33 Whe Duchess. ° ** The Duchess”’ 
$84 Washti and Esther. ; é * Author of ** Belle’s Letters ” 
35 Love Letters of a Worldly Woman Mrs. W. K. Clifford 
36 Whe House of the Wolf . ° Stanley J. Weyman 
37 Whe Wan in Black ° - Stanley J. AS Scar 
$8 She’s All the World to MWe e Hall Caine 
39 Single Heart and Double Face. Charles Reade 
40 Reveries of a Bachelor . ° ° lk. Marvel 
41 Dream Life . ° . ° Ik. Marvel 
42 A Romance of Two Worlds” . + _ Marie Corelli 
43 Madame Sans-Geue Z . «  WVictorien Sardou 


For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by mail, prepaid to 
any part of the world, on receipt of price. 





Address, Optimus Printing Co., 
Engraving Department, 


45 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK. 


THE ART ALBUM. 


A COLLECTION OF PHOTO-GRAVURES OF 


mone WIOLIS PAINTINGS; 
From the Art Galleries of All Nations. 





page engravings, with a page of explanatory text for each picture, 

the whole making a book of 304 pages, printed on the finest half-tone 

. paper, bound in the best silk cloth, stamped with appropriate designs 

in pure gold; oblong octavo size, 6 x 9inches, and over an inch in thick- 

ness. It is executed with the utmost artistic skill in every detail and 

would be an appropriate book for the centre table of any parlor, besides 

being an educational work of the highest character. All the engravings 

are exact reproductions of original paintings by celebrated authors. 

Previous to the recent discovery of the photo-engraving process sucha 

book could not be produced for less than-thirty dollars per copy. By the 

aid of the latest improved processes and machinery contained in our exten- 

sive establishment we are enabled to sell this book at a price within the 
reach of all, 


r [ “rs book is a work of the highest artistic merit, containing 144 full 


For sale at all book stores, or will be sent by 


Price § 1 50. express, prepaid to any part of the United 


States or Canada on receipt of price. 


ADDRESS OPTIMUS PRINTING CO., 


ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT, : 
45 to 51 Rose St., New York. 


if not convenient to remit in check or money order, you can send the 
amount in 2c, postage stamps. 


- 


; ELEGANT CLOTH BOUND BOOKS 


SOUVENIR EDITION OF | 
THE LATEST POPULAR FICTION. 


ANY of the most populai 
M works of fiction that have 
been brought out during 

the last few years have 

been published in paper covers 
only. Among such books there 
were many that deserved a good, 
durable cloth binding. Inaccord- - 
ance with this idea, we have con- 
cluded to select a number of the 
best of such works and reprint 
them in handsome and durable 
cloth binding, square 16mo size, 
5x 6lginches. They are printed 
from new type, on fine paper, 
bound in fashionable shades of 
good, genuine extra silk cloth, 


a‘ 


; 


rs 


ta 
3 


Wor ood 
wes 


SEI _ ne 


BY 
7S 


and stamped on sides and back in 
artistic designs. The volumes 
are first-class, high grade books 
in every respect. 


Price 50 cents each. 


i7 





For sale at all book stores or 
will be sent by express, prepaid, te 
any part of the United States or 
Canada, on receipt of price. 

The following is a list of titles 
thus far issued in this series; 
Ships that Pass in the Night—Beatrice Marraden 
Reveries of a Bachelor—tik. Marvel 
A Study in Scarlet— A. Conan Doyle 
A Yellow Aster--lota 
Black Beauty—Anna Sewell 
A Romance of Two Worlds—Marie Corelli 
ideala—Sarah Grand 
The Man in Black—Stanley J. Weyman 
Doijo—E. F. Benson 
Esther Waters— George Moore 
Singularly Deluded--Sarah Grand 
Charlotte Temple—Mrs. Rowson 
At the Green Dragon—Beatrice Harraden 
The Hired Baby and other stories—Marie Corelli and others 
The House of the Wolf—Stanley J. Weyman 
Miss Milne and I—By author of ‘‘A Yellow Aster” 

Vashti and Esther—By author of “ Belle’s Letters ”’ 


=" Most of these books appeared in cloth binding in England only, 
where they are sold at $2.50 per copy. Our price is only 50 cents. 


Asass Optimus Printing Co., 


ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT, 


45 to 51 ROSE ST., NEW YORK. 


If f0. convenient to remit in check or money order, you can send the 
@mount in 2c. postag : stamps. 


HE BABY’S FIRST SHOES 


COVERED WITH 
SILVER, 


COPPER OXIDIZED 
ANTIQUE BRASS. 








= fra ia 


A Beautiful and indestructible Ornament for the Home 


AND ‘ 
AN EVERLASTING RECOLLECTION OF BABYHOOD., 


should take the opportunity to have her Baby’s Shoes pre- 
Every mother served with metals in an artistic manner, heretofore unknown 


Many mothers have retained the first shoes worn by their children. These 
little keepsakes become dry, moth eaten and mouldy from dampness, and 
under such conditions they are placed where rarely seen. 

After many experiments we have attained perfection in preserving the 
shoes with metals which will never tarnish. We do not paint the shoes, 
but aetually cover them by a galvanic process with copper, and then 
plate with pure Silver, Copper oxidized, or Antique Brass. 

If the little shoe is worn through at the toe, and buttons are torn off, ora 
seam ripped, it will Jook all the more natural. Every detail is retained. 


PRICES: 


‘One shoe in Silver, - - $2.50 TwoshoesinSilver, - - $4.00 
One shoe in Copper Oxidized, 2.50 T'woshoes in Copper Oxidized, 4.00 
One shoe in Antique Brass, 2.50 Twoshoesin Antique Brass, 4.06 
é Special prices for larger sizes. 

All shoes should be sent to our address by express or registered mail 
for safe delivery. We deliver by express ©. O. D. 

2" Any other article made of kid, leather, silk, wool, &c., which ig 
prized as a keepsake, can be preserved in the same manner as the shoes. 


THE METALLIC ART COMPANY, 


_ ART SPECIALTIES, &c. 
46 East 19th Street, New York. 





FROM HEAVEN 
TO NEW YORK; 


The Good Hearts aud The Brown Stone Fronts, 
By ISAAC GEORGE REED, Jr. 


This is one of the most forceful and fearless arraignments of modern 
industrial and social life that has ever appeared in print. interwoven with 
the story of two young lovers, the author has depicted, in the strongest 
colors, that deplorable condition of our social organization, emanating 
from the fierce struggle for existencein New York and other large civilized 
citics. It isa novel with a purpose. 


PUBLISHED IN 


THE PARAGON LIBRARY OF MODERN BOOKS. 


Regular 12mo size, paper covers. 


PRICE 35 CENTS. 


For sale at all book stores or will be sent by mail to any part of the 
United States or Canada on receipt of price. 

If not convenient t remit in check or money order, you can send 
amount in 2c. postage stamps. 


Other books in this series as follows: 
1. ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA . By W. Clark Russell 


An exciting sea story by the greatest author of sea tales, 








2. ESTHER WATERS ‘ : R By George Moore 
The “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”’ of the white slaves of London. 
3. IN THE DAYS OF THE MUTINY . . BG. A. Henty 
One of Henty’s stirring historical novels, 
4. LADY VERNER’S FLIGHT $ - By “The Duchess’” 
A pure story of English life with the usual romance in it. 
5. PICTURES OF THE FUTURE , By Eugene Richter 


The most powerful antidote to state socialism ever published. 


6. CHATTANOOGA ( nibh oprnr ieee CPS al ho 


American Civil War 
A charming story, extremely well told, of adventure, danger, warfare and love, 


7. FROM HEAVEN TO NEW YORK. By Isaac George Reed, Jr. 


An accurate portrayal of social conditions in New York, Dedicated to 
Dr, Chas. H, Parkhurst. 


8. A MAD PRANK. : i By «‘ The Duchess ’’ 


One of the latest enjoyable love stories by this famous author. 


9. CONSTANCE . : ; ; By F. C. Phillips 


The readers of ‘“‘ Asin a Looking Glass ’’ will doubtless enjoy this story by the same author. 


10. A LOYAL LOVER . fi By Mrs. E. Lovett Cameron 


A charming love story that will be a welcome diversion from the every-day cares of life. 
Any of these books sent by mail, prepaid, on receipt of the above price, 


Address Optimus Printing Co., 
ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT, 
45 to 51 ROSE ST., NEW YORK, 


SOCIAL ETIQUETTE. 


- Clear and Concise Directions for Correct 
Manners and Conversation. 


This.is a subject of the greatest importance to 
every manor woman. There iscertainly nothing which 
adds more grace to character or to personal attractive- 
ness than the practice of a sensible politeness. Many 
people have been misjudged for years simply because 
they had neglected to perform some little polite act at 
the proper time; many young men and women have 
lost the opportunities of a lifetime on account of their 
ignorance of some trifling cust »mary rule of society. 


Every Young Man or Woman 


can acquire a knowledge of the laws and usages of 
polite society by referring to our complete 


FAND-BOOK OF ETIQUETTE. 


NEW AND REVISED EDITION. 
BOUND IN HANDSOME AND DURABLE EXTRA CLOTH, 


containing 286 pages of carefully prepared information and advice, 
recently revised and brought up to date. 





Following are a few of the subjects treated in this work: 

Success in Social Life; Sins of Ignorance and Carelessness; 
What Not to do in Company; Hints About Dancing; Boldness; 
Bashfulness ; The Etiquette of Visiting ; Introductions; Entertain- 
ments; Balls; Parties; Weddings; Dinners, etc.; Rules for City 
Visitors to the Country and for Country Visitors to the City; Forms 
of Invitation for every Occasion; The Jatest style of Card Eti- 
quette, etc. 


A special portion of the book has been devoted to answers by the 
author to correspondents in all parts of the country. The information 
in this department alone is worth more than the price of the book. 


Price 50 Cents Each. 


Sent by mail or express on receipt of price. If not convenient to send 
money order-or draft, you can remit in postage stamps of the denomina- 
tien of 1 and 2 cents. 


Optimus Printing Company, 
ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT, 
45 ROSE ST., NEW YORK. 


Shakespeare's Works, 


COMPLETE IN ONE LARGE VOLUME. 


Size, 73 inches wide; 10 inches long; 2 inches thick. Contain- 
ing over one thousand pages. Fully illustrated 
with over 40 engravings. 


HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CLOTH, 


AND STAMPED ON BACK IN PURE GOLD, 
WARRANTED UNTARNISHABLE, 


An Educational Work of the Highest Character and an 
Ornament for the Parlor Table. 


PRICH, $1.50 PER COPY. 


Sent by mail or express, prepaid on receipt of price; or if de- 
sired we will send the book C. O. D. (subject to ex- 
amination before you pay forit.) When sent 
C, O. D. the extra expense amounting 
to 35 cents will be added to 
price of book. 


This edition of Shakespeare’s works is one of the most 
complete and authentic compilations of this great author’s 
plays, poems and sonnets. Every word of the original is in it. 
In addition to the whole of Shakespeare’s Comedies, Tragedies, 
Histories, Poems and Sonnets (all that he ever wrote,) this 
edition contains a history of the stage, a life of the poet, a his- 
tory of each play and the text of Shakespeare’s will, together 
with explanatory notes on almost every page, giving the full 
original meaning of every word that might be misunderstood 
by the reader. 

Improved printing and binding machinery have enabled 
us to offer this beautiful book at the low price of $1.50 per 
copy, delivered to the purchaser free of all otherexpense. Send 
postal note, draft, currency in registered letter, money order 
(or postage stamps in denominations of one and two cents) to 


OPTIMUS PRINTING COMPANY, 
ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT, 
51 ROSE STREET. = = NEW YORK. 


SEWING WITH A FLAT IRON, 


THIS SOUNDS QUEER, 
BUT IT CAN BE DONE BY USING THE 


‘Heme fending Material 


THE MOST USSFUL AND GREATEST LABOR-SAVING 
INVENTION OF THE AGE, 





For Mending Rents and Tears For Mending Kid Gloves, Buck. 
in Clothing, Boots and Shoes, § skin Mittens, Gossamers, Um- 


and in all Rubber Goods, Cur- @ 4rellas, Carriage Tops and Rub- 


A bers. /t will repair any kind of 
tains on Wagons, Oil-cloths,.¢ cigthing from the finest Silk or 


Carpets and hundreds of goods § Satin to the coarsest Woolen 
foo numerous to mention. Goods. 
TS a Oe O_O bb b_b_ OD b-O O OO OD A hb Db OD 


IT HAS NO EQUAL! 


Any break or tear in any kind of dress goods can be mended 
with this in one-tenth time it would take to mend the same 
with needle and thread, and so neatly that the tear or hole can- 
not be distinguished. It will also hem the finest goods much 
better than be done in any other way, and entirely without the 
use of needle and thread. For Fancy Work, such as Plaiting, 
Hemson Scarfs, or for joining Ribbons, it is superior and less 
expensive than blind stitching. In most cases it is almost im- 
possible to see where a garment has been repaired by the use 
of this material, as the place looks just as good as new. 

Nothing ever placed on the market has had such a remark. 
able sale in so short a time as our Acme Mending Material. 

The Acme Mending Material is put up in convenient pack- 
ages, each containing one yard—enough to last an ordinary 
family a year or more. Full and explicit directions accompany 
each package, so that a child may understand howto use itz. 
and no person who ever tries it will ever be without it. 


PRICE 1:0 CENTS. 


SENT BY MAIL ON RECEIPT OF PRICE. 


USEFUL NOVELTY C0., 53 Rose St., New York. 





*¢ The road to wealth 1s through the fields of knowledge.** 


HOW TO SUCCEED. 


| ma 
—_———e----—— 

This is a problem that often recurs to the minds 
of every young man. Statistics show that only one © 
out of every ten persons who start out on 4 babi: 
ness career attain success in their undertakings. 
The successful one is not merely lucky. An exam- 
ination of his success would reveal the fact that he 
had industriously acquired all the business knowl- 
edge than he could get ; that he had studied the 
methods and theories of business—just as children 
study spelling. The advantages of a little study at 
home after working hours just makes the difference 
between seccess and failure. To go into business 
life without studying business methods and theo- 
ries is like going into battle without weapons, 


EVERY YOUNG MAN 


fan acquire a knowledge of the best modern business methods, as practised 
by the most experienced business men from our great book : 


THE BUSINESS EDUCATOR 


without a teacher, at home and with less than one hundred hours of study. 
This book is an encyclopedia of the knowledge necessary to the conduct 
of business. Among the contents are: An epitome of the Laws of the 
various States of the Union, alphabetically arranged for ready reference ; 
100 pages of Model Business Letters and Answers--There is more practical 
information in these 100 pages of business correspondence than can be 
acquired in years of business experience—Lessons in penmanship; Inter- 
est Tables; Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemvlies and Debating 
Societies ; Lessons in Type-writing ; Local forms for all Instriments used 
in Ordinary Business, such as Leases, Assignments, Contracts: ete., etc. ; 
Dictionary of Mercantile Terms; Interest laws of the United States; 
How to Measure Land; Educational Statistics of the World; List of 
Abbreviations; Latin, French, Spanish and Italian Words and Phrases; 
Rules for Punctuation ; Marks of Accent; Dictionery of Synonims; Copy- 
righ: Laws of the U. S. and many subjects which we have not space to 
mention here, making in all the most complete self-educator published. 


Containing 600 Pages, Bound in Extra Cloth and Gold Stamped, 


‘ PRICE $2.50. 
Sent by mail on receipt of price. Remittances can be made by registered 
Mail, Post Offce Order, Postal Note, Draft, Check, Postage Shepp here 


States, Well,, Fargo & Co., American or Adams Expresses, or Express 
Money Orders issued by any of the above companies, and made payable to 


OPTIMUS PRINTING COMPANY, 


S3 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK. 












- 


sin Alne 
bina 


Tatas 
Wits 











SS 


HAAS Naty Ss 


iy 





